Nuia

A picture published with the record for Nuia. What it shows has not been checked.

Smithsonian Institution · CC0 · via Smithsonian. 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
CyanobacteriaPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Cyanobacteria
Motility
stationaryPBDB, for Cyanobacteria
Environment
hypersaline,marine,brackish,freshwaterPBDB, for Cyanobacteria

Time the record covers

At least 114 million years on record.

The record covers at least 486.85 Mya to 372.15 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 488.3 Mya to 358.86 Mya.

Cambrian — about 1 of 33 occurrencesOrdovician — about 30 of 33 occurrencesOrdovicianSilurian — about 0 of 33 occurrencesDevonian — about 2 of 33 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 33 occurrences491–486 Mya — about 1 occurrence486–482 Mya — about 3 occurrences482–477 Mya — about 3 occurrences477–473 Mya — about 6 occurrences473–468 Mya — about 7 occurrences468–464 Mya — about 2 occurrences464–459 Mya — about 2 occurrences459–455 Mya — about 2 occurrences455–451 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences451–446 Mya — about 2 occurrences446–442 Mya — about 1 occurrence415–410 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences410–406 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences406–401 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences401–397 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences397–392 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences374–370 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences370–365 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences365–361 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences361–356 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences486.85 Mya372.15 Mya491 Mya356 Mya

33 occurrences of Nuia 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

33 occurrences

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

16 formations

Opd Unit — 36.72°N, 114.88°WTable Point — 48.55°N, 58.92°WTable Point — 50.70°N, 57.38°WHunghuayuan — 27.46°N, 109.04°EHunghuayuan — 30.10°N, 116.95°EMcKelligon Canyon — 31.85°N, 106.48°WHonghuayuan — 30.10°N, 116.93°EAnderken — 43.88°N, 75.55°EShallow Bay — 49.92°N, 57.82°WLianglitag — 39.25°N, 84.67°EFenhsiang — 30.85°N, 111.38°EGarden City — 42.00°N, 111.60°WMeitan — 27.80°N, 107.47°EFlorida Mountains — 31.83°N, 106.48°WLa Silla — 30.00°S, 69.00°WYijianfang — 40.08°N, 78.83°EKalladeina — 27.42°S, 139.67°EEl Santísimo — 28.92°N, 109.29°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Nuia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Nuia and its relatives

Ordovician

Where Nuia and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.

Found in the same rock

79 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Nuia, 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

22 references

Each of the 33 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. 10 further references are 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 Nuia

Source
Smithsonian
Credit
Smithsonian Institution
Licence
CC0 — this site’s default, not the record’s
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCyanobacteria through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Maslov 1954