Choiaella

Choiaella is an extinct genus of sea sponge that belongs to the family Choiidae. This genus lived from the Early Cambrian to the Early Silurian period having a near global distribution.

Choiaella

Ta-tea-two-te-to · CC BY 4.0 · 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

Time the record covers

At least 57 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 458.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 449.5 Mya.

Cambrian — about 20 of 22 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 2 of 22 occurrencesOrdovician541–537 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences537–534 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences534–531 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences531–528 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences528–525 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences525–522 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences522–519 Mya — about 6 occurrences519–516 Mya — about 9 occurrences516–513 Mya — about 2 occurrences513–510 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences510–507 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences507–503 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences488–485 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences485–482 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences482–479 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences479–476 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences460–457 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences457–454 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences454–451 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences451–448 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences516 Mya458.2 Mya541 Mya448 Mya

22 occurrences of Choiaella 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

22 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

7 formations

Yu'anshan — 25.33°N, 103.50°EYu'anshan — 24.77°N, 102.58°EYu'anshan — 24.87°N, 102.83°EYuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 25.40°N, 103.38°EQiongzhusi — 24.68°N, 102.98°EQiongzhusi — 24.65°N, 102.97°EBalang — 28.42°N, 109.42°ENiutitang — 27.60°N, 106.71°EKirkcolm — 55.52°N, 3.64°WFezouata — 30.50°N, 5.85°W

Loading coastlines…

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

Choiaella and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Choiaella and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

294 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Choiaella, 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

10 references

Each of the 22 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. 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 Choiaella

Credit
Ta-tea-two-te-to
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Choiaella was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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. Rigby and Hou 1995