Obolus

Tõnis Saadre · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- ObolinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Obolidae
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Obolidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Obolidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Lingulata
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At least 66 million years on record.
The record covers at least 516 Mya to 449.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 443.1 Mya.
107 occurrences of Obolus 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
107 occurrences- Cambrian42%
- Ordovician58%
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
65 formations
- Sablinskaya Formation7
- Hope Shales Formation5
- Lower Comley Formation5
- Yeli Formation4
- Kallavere Formation4
- Deadwood Formation3
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The named rock units Obolus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 41 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Obolus and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Obolus and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
823 taxa- Lingulella25 sites
- Hyolithes12 sites
- Asaphellus9 sites
- Onniella8 sites
- Acrotreta7 sites
- Pelagiella7 sites
- Primitia7 sites
- Pseudolingula7 sites
- Climacograptus6 sites
- Dendrograptus6 sites
- Dictyonema6 sites
- Modiolopsis6 sites
- Paterula6 sites
- Similodonta6 sites
- Sinuites6 sites
- Acrothele5 sites
- Amphigeisina danica5 sites
- Bivalvia5 sites
- Chancelloria5 sites
- Cordylodus5 sites
- Didymograptus5 sites
- Helmersenia5 sites
- Hertzina5 sites
- Hyolithellus micans5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 99 sites for Obolus, 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
62 references- Legend of the Central European series of sheets of the State Geological Map of the Russian Federation, scale 1:1,000,000 (third generation)9
- Evolution, succession & replacement in the type Caradoc (Ordovician) benthic faunas of England6
- Ordovician Brachiopoda from the Shelve District, Shropshire6
- The Lower Cambrian microfauna of Comley and Rushton, Shropshire, England5
- Regional Stratigraphic Table of North China4
- Cambrian strata of Wisconsin4
- Upper Cambrian Biostratigraphy of Estonia3
- Inarticulate brachiopods, ostracodes (bradoriids), and hyolithemintehs from the Sablinskaya Formation in the Leningrad region3
- Stratigraphy of Upper Cambrian-Lower Ordovician Subsurface Sequence in Williston Basin3
- Cambrian and Ozarkian Brachiopoda, Ozarkian Cephalopods and Notostraca3
- The revision of structural - facial zonation and stratigraphy of the lower part of the Ordovician in the south - east Baltic area2
- Stratigraphic Summary of the Southwestern Region of China2
Each of the 107 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. 50 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 content3

Picture of Obolus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Tõnis Saadre
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photography scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cryptocnemus obolus · USNM:IZ:USNM 134199
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itObolinae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Eichwald 1829