Elrathia

Searched as Elrathia alapyge. The Paleobiology Database treats Elrathia as the accepted name.

Elrathia is a genus of trilobite belonging to Ptychoparioidea known from the mid-Cambrian of Laurentia. E. kingii is one of the most common trilobite fossils in the USA locally found in extremely high concentrations within the Wheeler Formation in the U.S. state of Utah. E. kingii has been considered the most recognizable trilobite. Commercial quarries extract E. kingii in prolific numbers, with just one commercial collector estimating 1.5 million specimens extracted in a 20-year career. 1950 specimens of Elrathia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 3.7% of the community."...trilobite occupied the exaerobic zone, at the boundary of anoxic and dysoxic bottom waters. E. kingii consistently occur in settings below the oxygen levels required by other contemporaneous epifaunal and infaunal benthic biota and may have derived energy from a food web that existed independently of phototrophic primary productivity. Although other fossil organisms are known to have preferred such environments, E. kingii is the earliest-known inhabitant of them, extending the documented range of the exaerobic ecological strategy into the Cambrian Period."

Elrathia

Wilson44691 · Public Domain · 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
AlokistocaridaePBDB
Diet
detritivorePBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
fast-movingPBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Alokistocaridae
Environment
marinePBDB, for Trilobita

Time the record covers

At most 7.5 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 504.5 Mya and 497 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Cambrian — about 2 of 2 occurrencesCambrian505–504 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences504–504 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences504–504 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences504–504 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences504–503 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences503–503 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences503–503 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences503–502 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences502–502 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences502–502 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences502–502 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences502–501 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences501–501 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences501–501 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences501–500 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences500–500 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences500–500 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences500–500 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences500–499 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences499–499 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences499–499 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences499–498 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences498–498 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences498–498 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences498–498 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences498–497 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences497–497 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences497–497 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences505 Mya496.5 Mya

2 occurrences of Elrathia 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

2 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

Duchesnay — 50.63°N, 115.60°WEl Mogallón — 28.92°N, 109.29°W

Loading coastlines…

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

Elrathia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Elrathia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

536 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 68 sites for Elrathia, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content3

Picture of Elrathia

Credit
Wilson44691
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

Photogrammetry

Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
elrathia kingii · MST:PALEO:MST-SP-6257

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC0 Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

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

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 itAlokistocaridae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1924