Hamptonia

Hamptonia is an extinct genus of sea sponge known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale and the Lower Ordovician Fezouata formation. It was first described in 1920 by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 48 specimens of Hamptonia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community.

Hamptonia

瑞丽江的河水 · 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
HamptoniidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationaryPBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 38 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 477.1 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 469.4 Mya.

Cambrian — about 27 of 30 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 3 of 30 occurrencesOrdovician540–538 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences538–535 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences535–533 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences533–531 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences531–528 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences528–526 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences526–523 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences523–521 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences521–519 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences519–516 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences516–514 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences514–511 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences511–509 Mya — about 3 occurrences509–507 Mya — about 8 occurrences507–504 Mya — about 5 occurrences504–502 Mya — about 3 occurrences502–499 Mya — about 3 occurrences499–497 Mya — about 2 occurrences487–485 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences485–482 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences482–480 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences480–478 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences478–475 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences475–473 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences473–470 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences470–468 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences516 Mya477.1 Mya540 Mya468 Mya

30 occurrences of Hamptonia 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

30 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

9 formations

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WBurgess Shale — 51.05°N, 115.85°WMarjum — 39.22°N, 113.33°WMarjum — 39.00°N, 113.00°WMarjum — 39.27°N, 113.31°WFezouata — 30.52°N, 5.93°WFezouata — 30.50°N, 5.85°WWheeler — 39.50°N, 112.99°WDuchesnay — 51.10°N, 115.95°WDuchesnay — 50.63°N, 115.60°WMarjum Limestone — 39.22°N, 113.40°WYuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYu'anshan — 24.87°N, 102.83°EBalang — 28.42°N, 109.42°E

Loading coastlines…

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

Hamptonia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Hamptonia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

459 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Hamptonia, 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

13 references

Each of the 30 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. 1 further reference is 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 Hamptonia

Credit
瑞丽江的河水
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Hamptonia 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 itHamptoniidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1920