Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp.
Kiisortoqia soperi is an extinct species of arthropod from the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet Lagerstätte in Greenland. While it had a superficially trilobite-like bodyform, it also possessed large frontal appendages similar to those of radiodonts.

Qohelet12 · 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.
Time the record covers
At most 5 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 521 Mya and 516 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp. 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
1 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp. has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp. and its relatives
CambrianWhere Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp. and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
16 taxa- Buenaspis forteyi1 site
- Buenellus higginsi1 site
- Choia hindei1 site
- Hadranax augustus1 site
- Halkieria evangelista1 site
- Heliosphaeridium1 site
- Isoxys volucris1 site
- Kerygmachela kierkegaardi1 site
- Kleptothule rasmusseni1 site
- Pambdelurion whittingtoni1 site
- Pauloterminus spinodorsalis1 site
- Phragmochaeta canicularis1 site
- Porifera1 site
- Siricaris sp. n. gen.1 site
- Skiagia1 site
- Timorebestia koprii1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp., 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 Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp.
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Qohelet12
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Kiisortoqia soperi n. gen. n. sp. 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Kiisortoqia”
- 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 itFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.