Choia

Choia is a genus of extinct demosponge ranging from the Cambrian until the Lower Ordovician periods. Fossils of Choia have been found in the Burgess Shale in British Columbia; the Maotianshan shales of China; the Wheeler Shale in Utah; the Itajaí Basin in Brazil; and the Lower Ordovician Fezouata formation. It was first described in 1920 by Charles Doolittle Walcott.

Choia

Jean-Bernard Caron · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
ChoiidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 110 million years on record.

The record covers at least 521 Mya to 410.62 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 399.5 Mya.

Cambrian — about 60 of 63 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 2 of 63 occurrencesOrdovicianSilurian — about 0 of 63 occurrencesDevonian — about 1 of 63 occurrencesDevonian542–537 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences537–532 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences532–527 Mya — about 1 occurrence527–522 Mya — about 2 occurrences522–517 Mya — about 9 occurrences517–513 Mya — about 8 occurrences513–508 Mya — about 10 occurrences508–503 Mya — about 15 occurrences503–498 Mya — about 12 occurrences498–493 Mya — about 2 occurrences488–484 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences484–479 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences479–474 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences474–469 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences411–406 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences406–402 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences402–397 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences521 Mya410.62 Mya542 Mya397 Mya

63 occurrences of Choia on record, most of them in the Cambrian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

63 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

17 formations

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WBurgess Shale — 51.03°N, 115.83°WMarjum — 39.22°N, 113.33°WMarjum — 39.00°N, 113.00°WMarjum — 39.27°N, 113.31°WWheeler Shale — 39.36°N, 111.59°WWheeler Shale — 39.20°N, 113.30°WWheeler Shale — 39.36°N, 113.28°WWheeler Shale — 39.29°N, 113.31°WYuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 25.40°N, 103.38°EYuanshan — 24.84°N, 102.41°EYuanshan — 25.72°N, 103.99°EYu'anshan — 25.33°N, 103.50°EYu'anshan — 24.87°N, 102.83°EBalang — 28.42°N, 109.42°EBuen — 82.79°N, 42.23°WBuen — 82.40°N, 51.33°WBuen — 82.87°N, 41.08°WHetang — 29.92°N, 118.08°EWheeler — 39.50°N, 112.99°WFezouata — 30.52°N, 5.93°WFezouata — 30.50°N, 5.85°WMarjum Limestone — 39.22°N, 113.40°WHunsrück Slate — 49.89°N, 7.47°ELower Wheeler Shale — 39.00°N, 113.00°WWulongqing — 25.68°N, 102.17°ENiutitang — 27.67°N, 106.68°EShuijingtuo — 30.50°N, 111.16°EEl Mogallón — 28.92°N, 109.29°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Choia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Choia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Choia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

693 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Choia, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

27 references

Each of the 63 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 14 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Choia

Credit
Jean-Bernard Caron
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Choia was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itChoiidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1920