Opabinia
Uncredited · 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
- OpabiniidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 35 million years on record.
The record covers at least 505.3 Mya to 469.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 509.7 Mya to 458.2 Mya.
3 occurrences of Opabinia on record, most of them in the Cambrian. 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- Cambrian67%
- Ordovician33%
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
- Burgess Shale Formation · Chancellor Group2
- Gilwern Volcanic Formation · Builth Volcanic Group1
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The named rock units Opabinia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Opabinia and its relatives
CambrianWhere Opabinia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
105 taxa- Arthropoda2 sites
- Bosworthia2 sites
- Burgessia2 sites
- Burgessochaeta2 sites
- Canadaspis perfecta2 sites
- Diraphora2 sites
- Ehmaniella burgessensis2 sites
- Eldonia ludwigi2 sites
- Haplophrentis carinatus2 sites
- Hazelia2 sites
- Liangshanella2 sites
- Marrella splendens2 sites
- Molaria2 sites
- Morania2 sites
- Ottoia prolifica2 sites
- Pentagnostus praecurrens2 sites
- Scenella amii2 sites
- Selkirkia columbia2 sites
- Waptia fieldensis2 sites
- Wiwaxia corrugata2 sites
- Yohoia2 sites
- Acanthotretella spinosa1 site
- Acrothyra1 site
- Acrotretida1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Opabinia, 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
2 references- Paleoecology of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale2
- A Middle Ordovician Burgess Shale-type fauna from Castle Bank, Wales (UK)1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Opabinia
- Source
- Wikidata/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
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 itOpabiniidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1912