Moira atropos
Moira atropos, commonly known as the mud heart urchin, is a species of irregular sea urchin in the family Schizasteridae.

Uncredited · 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
- MoiraPBDB
- 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 3.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka.
3 occurrences of Moira atropos on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pliocene33%
- Pleistocene67%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Moira atropos 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.
Moira atropos and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Moira atropos and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
18 taxa- Abra angulata1 site
- Anomia ephippium1 site
- Arca caelata1 site
- Atrina seminuda1 site
- Avicula atlantica1 site
- Caryocorbula contracta1 site
- Chione cribraria1 site
- Clathrolucina costata1 site
- Cupularia denticulata1 site
- Laevicardium serratum1 site
- Mya (Arenomya) arenaria1 site
- Parvilucina crenulata1 site
- Semele transversa1 site
- Serrula variabilis1 site
- Silliquaria cariboea1 site
- Spisula (Hemimactra) solidissima1 site
- Tellina (Eurytellina) alternata1 site
- Trachycardium (Trachycardium) isocardia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Moira atropos, 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
3 references- Neogene Paleontology in the Northern Dominican Republic. 13. The Class Echinoidea (Echinodermata)1
- The Pleistocene marine fauna of Wailes Bluff and Langley Bluff, Maryland1
- Post-Pleiocene Fossils of South Carolina1
Each of the 3 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 Moira atropos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Moira atropos 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 itMoira through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lamarck 1816)