Niobe (Niobella)
Searched as Niobella (Niobe) homfrayi smithi. The Paleobiology Database treats Niobe (Niobella) as the accepted name.

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
- NiobePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Trilobita
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Asaphida
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Asaphida
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Asaphidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 9.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 486.85 Mya and 477.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Niobe (Niobella) on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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- Ordovician100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Niobe (Niobella) has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Niobe (Niobella) and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Niobe (Niobella) and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
535 taxa- Euloma19 sites
- Geragnostus19 sites
- Ampyx15 sites
- Symphysurus15 sites
- Apatokephalus14 sites
- Nileus14 sites
- Cyclopyge12 sites
- Megalaspides nericiensis12 sites
- Harpides10 sites
- Megalaspides10 sites
- Shumardia10 sites
- Asaphellus9 sites
- Nanorthis9 sites
- Varvia9 sites
- Leiagnostus8 sites
- Megistaspis8 sites
- Symphysurus angustatus8 sites
- Apheoorthis7 sites
- Lycophoria7 sites
- Macropyge7 sites
- Promegalaspides7 sites
- Raymondaspis7 sites
- Ceratopyge6 sites
- Cyrtometopus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 101 sites for Niobe (Niobella), 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
1 referenceEach 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. 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 Niobe (Niobella)
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Niobe (Niobella) 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itNiobe through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Reed 1931)