Dartmuthia

Dartmuthia is an extinct genus of primitive jawless fish that lived in the Silurian period. Fossils of Dartmuthia have been found in Himmiste Quarry, on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. It was first described by William Patten.

Dartmuthia

Jonathan Chen · 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
TremataspididaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata

Time the record covers

At most 4 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 426.7 Mya and 422.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Silurian — about 5 of 5 occurrencesSilurian427–427 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences427–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences425–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences424–423 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences427.2 Mya422.2 Mya

5 occurrences of Dartmuthia on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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

5 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

3 formations

Himmiste — 59.07°N, 24.79°EHimmiste — 58.27°N, 21.96°EKuressaare — 58.26°N, 22.49°EVelikoretskaya — 67.59°N, 49.12°E

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

Dartmuthia and its relatives

Silurian

Where Dartmuthia and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.

Found in the same rock

30 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Dartmuthia, 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

4 references

Each of the 5 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 Dartmuthia

Credit
Jonathan Chen
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Dartmuthia 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 itTremataspididae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Patten 1931