Liangshanella
Liangshanella is a genus of Cambrian bradoriid known from the Chengjiang biota and Burgess Shale. 6263 specimens of Liangshanella are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 11.9% of the community.

Jean-Bernard Caron · CC0 · 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
- SvealutidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bradoriida
Time the record covers
At least 34 million years on record.
The record covers at least 521 Mya to 486.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 477.1 Mya.
70 occurrences of Liangshanella 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
70 occurrences- Cambrian99%
- Ordovician1%
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
11 formations
- Burgess Shale Formation · Chancellor Group41
- Bastion Formation10
- Mernmerna Formation Formation9
- Shuijingtuo Formation2
- Henson Gletscher Formation2
- Wulongqing Formation1
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The named rock units Liangshanella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Liangshanella and its relatives
CambrianWhere Liangshanella and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
381 taxa- Hazelia27 sites
- Diraphora26 sites
- Ehmaniella burgessensis26 sites
- Selkirkia columbia26 sites
- Trilobita26 sites
- Wiwaxia corrugata26 sites
- Burgessia25 sites
- Marrella splendens25 sites
- Pentagnostus praecurrens25 sites
- Scenella amii24 sites
- Yohoia24 sites
- Canadaspis perfecta23 sites
- Haplophrentis carinatus23 sites
- Morania23 sites
- Ottoia prolifica23 sites
- Sidneyia23 sites
- Waptia fieldensis23 sites
- Laggania22 sites
- Micromitra22 sites
- Naraoia compacta22 sites
- Lingulella21 sites
- Pollingeria grandis21 sites
- Hurdia20 sites
- Tubullela sp.20 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 54 sites for Liangshanella, 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- Paleoecology of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale40
- Small shelly fauna from the upper Lower Cambrian Bastion and Ella Island Formations, North-East Greenland10
- Global correlation of the early Cambrian of South Australia: Shelly fauna of the Dailyatia odyssei Zone9
- Middle Cambrian (Wuliuan Stage) Small Shelly Fossils from North Greenland (Laurentia)2
- The Qingjiang biota - A Burgess Shale-type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China1
- Paleocommunity analysis of the Burgess Shale Tulip Beds, Mount Stephen, British Columbia: Comparison with the Walcott Quarry and implications for community variation in the Burgess Shale1
- A new phyllopod bed-like assemblage from the Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rockies1
- The oldest bivalved arthropods from the early Cambrian of East Gondwana: Systematics, biostratigraphy and biogeography1
- Luo et al., 20081
- Middle Cambrian to Lower Ordovician faunas from the Chingiz Mountain Range, central Kazakhstan1
- Skeletal faunas from the Qiongzhusian of southern Shaanxi: biodiversity and lithofacies-biofacies links in the Lower Cambrian carbonate settings1
- Lower Cambrian pediculate lingulids from Yunnan, China1
Each of the 70 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 Liangshanella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jean-Bernard Caron
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Liangshanella 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 itSvealutidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.