Halkieria
Halkieria is a genus of halkieriid mollusc which has been found on almost every continent in Lower to Mid Cambrian deposits, forming a large component of the small shelly fossil assemblages. The best known species is Halkieria evangelista, from the North Greenland Sirius Passet Lagerstätte, in which complete specimens were collected on an expedition in 1989. The fossils were described by Simon Conway Morris and John Peel in a short paper in 1990 in the journal Nature. Later a more thorough description was undertaken in 1995 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and wider evolutionary implications were posed.

derivative work: Martin ( talk ) Halkieria2.jpg : Photo taken by Jakob Vinther · 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
- HalkieriinaePBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 18 million years on record.
The record covers at least 530.7 Mya to 512.1 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 506.5 Mya.
153 occurrences of Halkieria 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
153 occurrences- Cambrian100%
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
36 formations
- Zhujiaqing Formation · Meishucunian Group47
- Pestrotsvet Formation14
- Chulaktau Formation9
- Yurtus Formation7
- Shabakty Formation7
- Weymouth Formation5
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The named rock units Halkieria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed.
Halkieria and its relatives
CambrianWhere Halkieria and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
518 taxa- Watsonella crosbyi37 sites
- Chancelloria30 sites
- Conotheca subcurvata25 sites
- Bemella jacutica23 sites
- Aldanella attleborensis19 sites
- Hyolithellus vladimirovae19 sites
- Cupittheca mira18 sites
- Oelandiella korobkovi17 sites
- Hyolithellus15 sites
- Paragloborilus subglobosus15 sites
- Hyolithellus tenuis13 sites
- Lapworthella13 sites
- Torellella laevigata13 sites
- Turcutheca13 sites
- Coleoloides typicalis12 sites
- Eccentrotheca kanesia12 sites
- Emarginoconus mirus12 sites
- Securiconus simplex12 sites
- Aetholicopalla adnata11 sites
- Siphogonuchites triangularis11 sites
- Conotheca mammilata10 sites
- Ladatheca cylindrica10 sites
- Purella cristata10 sites
- Zhijinites longistriatus10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 123 sites for Halkieria, 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
35 references- Terreneuvian small shelly faunas of East Yunnan (South China) and their biostratigraphic implication38
- Stratigrafiya i fauna pogranichnykh sloyev Kembriya i Dokembriya Malogo Karatau [Stratigraphy and fauna of the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary beds of the Malyy Karatau]18
- Biostratigraphy of the Vendian-Cambrian beds and the lower Cambrian boundary in Siberia14
- Zooproblematica and mollusca from the Lower Cambrian Meishucun section (Yunnan, China) and taxonomy and systematics of the Cambrian small shelly fossils of China9
- Tannuolina and Micrina (Tannuolinidae) from the Lower Cambrian of eastern Yunnan, south China, and their scleritome reconstruction9
- Lower Cambrian Halkieriids and other coeloscleritomorphs from Aksu-Wushi, Xinjiang, China6
- Lower Cambrian of eastern Massachusetts: stratigraphy and small shelly fossils5
- Biostratigraphy of the Vendian-Cambrian Sukharikha River section, northwestern Siberian Platform4
- Upper Placentian-Branchian series of mainland Nova Scotia (middle-upper Lower Cambrian) faunas, paleoenvironments, and stratigraphic revision4
- Terreneuvian stratigraphy and faunas from the Anabar Uplift, Siberia3
- Shelly fossils from the lower Cambrian Pararaia bunyerooensis Zone, Flinders Ranges, South Australia3
- Integrated approaches to terminal Proterozoic stratigraphy: an example from the Olenek Uplift, northeastern Siberia3
Each of the 153 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. 23 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 Halkieria
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- derivative work: Martin ( talk ) Halkieria2.jpg : Photo taken by Jakob Vinther
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Halkieria 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Halkieria”
- 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 itHalkieriinae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Poulsen 1967