Ikaria wariootia
Ikaria is an extinct monospecific genus of a worm-like, possible bilaterian animal. Its fossils are found in rocks of the Ediacara Member of South Australia that are estimated to be between 560 and 555 million years old. The genus is represented by a single species, Ikaria wariootia. A representative of the Ediacaran biota, Ikaria lived during the Ediacaran period, roughly 15 million years before the Cambrian, when the Cambrian explosion occurred and where widespread fossil evidence of modern bilaterian taxa appear in the fossil record.

Apokryltaros · 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
- IkariaPBDB
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Ikaria wariootia on record. 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
1 occurrencesThese 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
1 formation
- Rawnsley Quartzite Formation · Wilpena Group1
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The named rock units Ikaria wariootia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
6 taxa- Aspidella1 site
- Aulozoon1 site
- Dickinsonia costata1 site
- Funisia1 site
- Parvancorina1 site
- Rugoconites1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ikaria wariootia, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ikaria wariootia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Apokryltaros
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ikaria wariootia 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.
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 itIkaria through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Evans et al. 2020