Echinocyamus pusillus

Echinocyamus pusillus, commonly known as the pea urchin or green urchin, is a species of sand dollar, a sea urchin in the family Fibulariidae, native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It buries itself in gravel or coarse sand at depths down to about 1,250 m (4,000 ft).

Echinocyamus pusillus

Hans Hillewaert · 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
EchinocyamusPBDB
Diet
detritivorePBDB, for Clypeasteroida
Life habit
semi-infaunalPBDB, for Clypeasteroida
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Clypeasteroida
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
Environment
marinePBDB, for Echinodermata

Time the record covers

At least 11 million years on record.

The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Miocene — about 1 of 5 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 3 of 5 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 1 of 5 occurrencesPleistocene14–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences12–11 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences5.7–5.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences5.3–4.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.8–4.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.3–3.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences3.8–3.3 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences3.3–2.9 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences2.9–2.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences477 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence11.63 Mya129 ka14.3 Mya0 Mya

5 occurrences of Echinocyamus pusillus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

2 formations

Kattendijk, Lillo — 51.25°N, 4.28°ERed Crag — 51.87°N, 1.29°E

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The named rock units Echinocyamus pusillus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Echinocyamus pusillus and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Echinocyamus pusillus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

127 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Echinocyamus pusillus, 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

5 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 Echinocyamus pusillus

Credit
Hans Hillewaert
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itEchinocyamus through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Müller 1776)