Ophiolepis
Ophiolepis is a genus of brittle stars in the family Ophiolepididae, the family in which it is the type genus. The type species of the genus is Ophiolepis superba though the original type species was Ophiura annulosa which is now accepted as Ophiomastix annulosa.
NOAA · Public Domain · 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
- OphiolepididaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, detritivorePBDB, for Ophiolepididae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Ophiolepididae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ophiolepididae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Ophiuroidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Ophiuroidea
Time the record covers
At least 244 million years on record.
The record covers at least 247 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 248.6 Mya to 11.7 ka.
16 occurrences of Ophiolepis on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
16 occurrencesThese 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
4 formations
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The named rock units Ophiolepis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ophiolepis and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Ophiolepis and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
199 taxa- Stegophiura hagenowi8 sites
- Applinocrinus cretaceus7 sites
- Ophiura serrata7 sites
- Ophiocoma senonensis6 sites
- Ophioderma substriatum6 sites
- Ophiomusium granulosum5 sites
- Amphiura plana4 sites
- Ophiacantha danica4 sites
- Ophiocoma rasmusseni4 sites
- Ophioderma radiatum4 sites
- Ophiosmilax alternatus4 sites
- Meonia semiglobularis3 sites
- Ophiacantha rugosa3 sites
- Ophiacantha striata3 sites
- Ophiactis sulcata3 sites
- Ophiomusium3 sites
- Ophiomusium sentum3 sites
- Ophiomusium sinuatum3 sites
- Ophiomyxa jekerica3 sites
- Ophioscolex clivulus3 sites
- Ophioscolex cretaceus3 sites
- Ophiothrix cristata3 sites
- Trichaster3 sites
- Trichaster ornatus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Ophiolepis, 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
8 references- Campanian-Maastrichtian ophiuroids (Echinodermata) from Tercis les Bains (Landes, France)5
- Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene echinoderms and the K/T boundary in the southeast Netherlands and the northeast Belgium. - part 3: Ophiuroids5
- Late Cretaceous ophiuroids from the Münsterland Basin (Germany): preliminary observations1
- New discovery of fossil ophiuroids from Guizhou and southern Sichuan, China1
- Marine Triassic faunas from the Shihchienfeng Group in the northern Weihe River basin, Shaanxi province1
- Sur un Ophiuruidé du Rhétien des Alpes-Maritimes1
- Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss fossiler Ophiuren1
- On some bones of a fossil seal from the post-Tertiary clay at Dunbar1
Each of the 16 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 Ophiolepis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NOAA
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ophiolepis 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Ophiolepis”
- 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 itOphiolepididae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Müller and Troschel 1840