Hexactinella

Hexactinella

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
TretodictyinaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB, for Hexactinosa
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Hexactinosa
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB, for Hexactinosa
Vision
blindPBDB, for Hexactinellida
Environment
marinePBDB, for Hexactinellida

Time the record covers

At least 153 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 7.246 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 14 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 14 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 14 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 14 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 14 occurrencesEocene — about 6 of 14 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 14 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 14 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 14 occurrences171–166 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences166–160 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences127–121 Mya — about 1 occurrence104–99 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences99–93 Mya — about 2 occurrences93–88 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences49–43 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences43–38 Mya — about 5 occurrences32–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–21 Mya — about 2 occurrences15–9.6 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences9.6–4.0 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences165.3 Mya11.63 Mya171 Mya4 Mya

14 occurrences of Hexactinella on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

14 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

5 formations

Vic Marls — 41.85°N, 2.23°EVic Marls — 41.95°N, 2.22°ELincoln Creek — 47.28°N, 123.52°WWest Melbury Marly Chalk — 51.58°N, 1.47°WPatcham — 23.70°N, 69.05°EChiampo — 45.53°N, 11.25°E

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The named rock units Hexactinella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Hexactinella and its relatives

Eocene

Where Hexactinella and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

149 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Hexactinella, 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

8 references

Each of the 14 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 Hexactinella

Source
iDigBio
Credit
via iDigBio
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Hexactinella was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itTretodictyinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Carter 1885