Ellipsactinia

Ellipsactinia

via iDigBio · CC BY · via iDigBio. 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
PoriferaPBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB, for Porifera
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Porifera
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB, for Porifera
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 68 million years on record.

The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 137.05 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 227.3 Mya to 132.6 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 1 of 17 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 17 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 17 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 15 of 17 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 17 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous229–226 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences226–223 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences223–219 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences219–216 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences216–213 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences213–209 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences209–206 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences206–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences164–160 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences160–157 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences157–154 Mya — about 2 occurrences154–150 Mya — about 4 occurrences150–147 Mya — about 4 occurrences147–144 Mya — about 4 occurrences144–141 Mya — about 1 occurrence137–134 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences134–131 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences205.7 Mya137.05 Mya229 Mya131 Mya

17 occurrences of Ellipsactinia on record, most of them in the Late 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

17 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

Plassen — 47.58°N, 13.92°EAbenaki — 43.69°N, 60.83°WJieza — 32.91°N, 96.65°E

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The named rock units Ellipsactinia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ellipsactinia and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Ellipsactinia and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

124 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Ellipsactinia, 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

7 references

Each of the 17 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 Ellipsactinia

Source
iDigBio
Credit
via iDigBio
Licence
CC BY
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ellipsactinia 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.

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

Keep going

What may have been alongside itPorifera through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Steinmann 1878