Macraster

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
- ToxasteridaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, detritivorePBDB, for Spatangoida
- Life habit
- shallow infaunalPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Spatangoida
Time the record covers
At least 6.9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 106.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 100.5 Mya.
13 occurrences of Macraster on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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
13 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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
4 formations
- Grès verts helvétiques Formation7
- Denison Formation · Washita Group3
- Jijona Formation1
- Mural Formation1
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The named rock units Macraster has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Macraster and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Macraster and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
95 taxa- Hemiaster5 sites
- Desmoceras (Desmoceras) latidorsatum3 sites
- Holaster3 sites
- Beudanticeras beudanti2 sites
- Birostrina2 sites
- Discoides2 sites
- Gastropoda2 sites
- Hoplites2 sites
- Kossmatella2 sites
- Mortoniceras2 sites
- Plicatula2 sites
- Prohysteroceras2 sites
- Puzosia (Puzosia) mayoriana2 sites
- Scaphites (Scaphites) hugardianus2 sites
- Tetragramma2 sites
- Anisoceras1 site
- Anisoceras armatum1 site
- Anisoceras perarmatum1 site
- Aucellina1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
- Camerogalerus1 site
- Camptonectes virgatus1 site
- Cantabrigites1 site
- Cantabrigites cantabrigense1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Macraster, 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
5 references- Les grès verts helvétiques (Aptien moyen-Albien supérieur) de Haute-Savoie, Valais et Vaud (Alpes occidentales franco-suisses)7
- The Mesozoic Echinodermata of the United States3
- Upper Aptian-Lower Albian Mural Formation: stratigraphy, biostratigraphy and depositional cycles on the Sonoran shelf, northern Mexico1
- The mode of life and paleobiogeography of the genus Douvillaster Lambert (Echinoidea: Spatangoida) as first recorded in the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) of Spain1
- Un assemblage de Macraster cf. Polygonus,spatangoide primitif de l'Albien moyen de Saint-Jouin(Seine-Maritime):développement ontogénique,démographie,paléoécologie1
Each of the 13 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 Macraster
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Macraster was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itToxasteridae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Roemer 1888