Coleia
Coleia is an extinct genus of decapods in the group Polychelida that lived from the Late Triassic to the Late Jurassic. It was described by Broderip in 1835, and the type species is C. antiqua. A new species, C. martinlutheri, which existed during the Sinemurian of what is now Germany, was described by Günter Schweigert and Werner Ernst in 2012.

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 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
- ColeiidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Polychelida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 81 million years on record.
The record covers at least 233.6 Mya to 152.21 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 143.1 Mya.
26 occurrences of Coleia on record, most of them in the Early Jurassic. 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
26 occurrencesThese 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
- Blue Lias Formation · Lias Group3
- Lilstock Formation · Penarth Group2
- Painten Formation · Weißjura Group1
- Lombardische Kieselkalk Formation1
- Calcare di Chiampomano Formation1
- Nakatsuka Formation · Mine Group1
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The named rock units Coleia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Coleia and its relatives
Early JurassicWhere Coleia and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
198 taxa- Bintoniella brodiei3 sites
- Holcoptera schlotheimi3 sites
- Liassophlebia3 sites
- Orthophlebia liassica3 sites
- Squaloraja polyspondyla3 sites
- Acrodus anningiae2 sites
- Acrodus nobilis2 sites
- Bivalvia2 sites
- Brachiopoda2 sites
- Brachyphyllum2 sites
- Caturus heterurus2 sites
- Caturus latipennis2 sites
- Chondrosteus acipenseroides2 sites
- Coccolepis liassicus2 sites
- Coleopteron2 sites
- Dapedium2 sites
- Dapedium colei2 sites
- Dapedium granulatum2 sites
- Dapedium magnevillei2 sites
- Dapedium milloti2 sites
- Dapedium politum2 sites
- Dapedium radiatum2 sites
- Dorsetichthys bechei2 sites
- Eugnathus minor2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Coleia, 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
13 references- Contributions to the Study of Fossil Crustacea6
- Woods, 19255
- Woods, 19253
- Notes on the Species of the Genus Eryon, Desm., from the Lias and Oolite of England and Bavaria3
- First record of a polychelid lobster (Crustacea: Decapoda: Coleiidae) from the Pliensbachian (Early Jurassic) of Germany1
- First record of a polychelid lobster (Crustacea: Decapoda: Coleiidae) from the Sinemurian (Early Jurassic) of Germany1
- Im Reich der Meerengel. Der Nusplinger Plattenkalk und seine Fossilien1
- Schamhaupten, an outstanding Fossil-Lagerstätte in a silicified Plattenkalk around the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian boundary (Southern Franconian Alb, Bavaria)1
- Coleia boboi n. sp. (Crustacea, Decapoda, Eryonoidea) from the Late Triassic (Rhaetian) of Monte Verzegnis (Udine, NE Italy)1
- First notice of the family Coleiidae Van Straelen (Crustacea: Decapoda: Eryonoidea) from the upper Triassic of Japan1
- Exceptional preservation in the Jurassic of Osteno1
- Archaeastacus (Eryon) willemoesii, a new genus and species of Eryonidae1
Each of the 26 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. 1 further reference is 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 Coleia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Coleia was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Coleia”
- 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 itColeiidae through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Broderip 1835