Laurieipterus
Laurieipterus is a genus of a eurypterid classified as part of the family Stylonuridae. It contains one species, L. elegans from the Early Silurian of Scotland.

textbook: John Mason Clarke (1857-1925) and Rudolf Ruedemann (1864-1956) illustrator: Malcolm Laurie (1866-1932) · Public Domain · 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
- StylonuridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Eurypterida
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Eurypterida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Eurypterida
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Eurypterida
Time the record covers
At most 11 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 443.1 Mya and 432.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Laurieipterus on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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
2 occurrences- Silurian100%
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
- Reservoir Formation · North Esk Group2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Laurieipterus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Laurieipterus and its relatives
SilurianWhere Laurieipterus and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
28 taxa- Drepanopterus pentlandicus2 sites
- Hardieopterus macrophthalmus2 sites
- Pentlandopterus minor2 sites
- Slimonia dubia2 sites
- Stoermeropterus conicus2 sites
- Algae1 site
- Bembicosoma pomphicus1 site
- Carcinosoma1 site
- Carcinosoma scoticus1 site
- Cephalopoda1 site
- Conulariida1 site
- Craniops1 site
- Crinoidea1 site
- Dictyonema1 site
- Dolichophonus loudonensis1 site
- Eurypterus cephalaspis1 site
- Geisonoceras maclareni1 site
- Glassia1 site
- Koremograptus sp.1 site
- Lamontopterus1 site
- Lingulata1 site
- Monograptus1 site
- Nanahughmilleria1 site
- Parastylonurus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Laurieipterus, 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
2 references- Habitat of Llandoverian-Lochkovian eurypterids1
- On a Silurian scorpion and some additional eurypterid remains from the Pentland Hills1
Each of the 2 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 Laurieipterus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- textbook: John Mason Clarke (1857-1925) and Rudolf Ruedemann (1864-1956) illustrator: Malcolm Laurie (1866-1932)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itStylonuridae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kjellesvig-Waering 1966