Euphausiacea

Krill (Euphausiids) are small and exclusively marine crustaceans of the order Euphausiacea, found in all of the world's oceans. The name "krill" comes from the Norwegian word krill, meaning "small fry of fish", which is also often attributed to species of fish.

Euphausiacea

Øystein Paulsen · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
CaridoidaPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Malacostraca
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Malacostraca
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca

Time the record covers

At least 330 million years on record.

The record covers at least 330.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 346.7 Mya to 0 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 5 of 6 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 6 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 6 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 6 occurrences354–342 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences342–330 Mya — about 1 occurrence330–318 Mya — about 1 occurrence318–306 Mya — about 2 occurrences12–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence330.3 Mya11.7 ka354 Mya0 Mya

6 occurrences of Euphausiacea on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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

6 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

4 formations

Gullane — 55.98°N, 3.26°WCarbondale — 40.27°N, 90.38°WPottsville — 33.33°N, 87.11°WManse Burn — 55.92°N, 4.33°W

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The named rock units Euphausiacea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Euphausiacea and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Euphausiacea and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

55 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Euphausiacea, 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

6 references

Each of the 6 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 Euphausiacea

Credit
Øystein Paulsen
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Euphausiacea 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

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 itCaridoida through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Dana 1852