Forcipulatida

The Forcipulatida are an order of sea stars, containing three families and 49 genera.

Forcipulatida

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
TripedicellariaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
low-level epifaunal, solitaryPBDB
Motility
slow-movingPBDB
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
Environment
marine,brackishPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 199 million years on record.

The record covers at least 199.5 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 53 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 3 of 53 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 4 of 53 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 3 of 53 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 3 of 53 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 12 of 53 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 53 occurrencesEocene — about 19 of 53 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 53 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 53 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 53 occurrencesPleistocene — about 4 of 53 occurrences205–199 Mya — about 3 occurrences171–164 Mya — about 3 occurrences164–157 Mya — about 1 occurrence157–151 Mya — about 2 occurrences151–144 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences144–137 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences130–123 Mya — about 2 occurrences123–116 Mya — about 1 occurrence103–96 Mya — about 3 occurrences96–89 Mya — about 4 occurrences89–82 Mya — about 2 occurrences82–75 Mya — about 1 occurrence75–68 Mya — about 2 occurrences68–62 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences62–55 Mya — about 1 occurrence55–48 Mya — about 7 occurrences48–41 Mya — about 6 occurrences41–34 Mya — about 5 occurrences34–27 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–14 Mya — about 1 occurrence14–6.8 Mya — about 2 occurrences6.8–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences199.5 Mya129 ka205 Mya0 Mya

53 occurrences of Forcipulatida on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

53 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

17 formations

La Meseta — 64.24°S, 56.67°WLa Meseta — 64.26°S, 56.68°WLa Meseta — 64.23°S, 56.61°WLa Meseta — 64.26°S, 56.63°WTamiami — 26.98°N, 82.21°WTamiami — 26.13°N, 81.48°WCraie d'Antifer — 49.68°N, 0.17°ECraie d'Antifer — 49.75°N, 0.37°ECraie du Cap Fagnet — 48.80°N, 0.00°ECraie du Cap Fagnet — 49.68°N, 0.17°ETalbot — 38.07°N, 76.36°WGulpen — 50.73°N, 5.67°EMarnes de Jamoigne — 49.72°N, 5.22°EEntre Rios — 33.72°S, 59.25°WWhite Chalk — 54.52°N, 13.63°ECraie de Rouen — 48.80°N, 0.00°ECraie d'Eletot — 49.77°N, 0.42°EN'Golome marl — 8.37°S, 13.37°EChico — 39.72°N, 121.83°WTaboulouart — 30.78°N, 8.53°WSan Pablo — 38.02°N, 122.13°WRuatangata — 35.79°S, 174.48°ESwift — 45.20°N, 108.80°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Forcipulatida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Forcipulatida and its relatives

Eocene

Where Forcipulatida and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

751 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 46 sites for Forcipulatida, 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

25 references

Each of the 53 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. 13 further references are not listed. 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 Forcipulatida

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 itTripedicellaria through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Perrier 1884)