Orbitolina
Searched as Orbitolina sp.. The Paleobiology Database treats Orbitolina as the accepted name.
Orbitolina is an extinct genus of foraminifera belonging to the order Textulariida and family Orbitolinidae. Fossils of this genus are widely found in beds deposited in the Tethys Ocean ranging from Aptian to Cenomanian in age. It has been used as a shallow carbonate platform facies marker and as a Cretaceous index fossil.

Larry D. Moore · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- OrbitolininaePBDB
- Diet
- detritivorePBDB, for Textulariina
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Textulariina
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Foraminifera
Time the record covers
At least 120 million years on record.
The record covers at least 143.1 Mya to 23.04 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 161.5 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
147 occurrences of Orbitolina on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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
147 occurrences- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous76%
- Late Cretaceous22%
- Mioceneunder 1%
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
21 formations
- Rizan Aneiza Formation15
- Halal Formation13
- Langshan Formation9
- Mural Formation7
- Calcaires récifaux supérieurs Formation4
- Mural Limestone Formation · Bisbee Group3
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The named rock units Orbitolina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 78 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Orbitolina and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Orbitolina and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
479 taxa- Cuneolina7 sites
- Eoradiolites plicatus7 sites
- Agriopleura6 sites
- Amphidonte (Ceratostreon) boussingaulti6 sites
- Horiopleura6 sites
- Choffatella decipiens5 sites
- Miliolidae5 sites
- Monopleura5 sites
- Brachiopoda4 sites
- Gastropoda4 sites
- Icthyosarcolites4 sites
- Palorbitolina4 sites
- Praeradiolites4 sites
- Requienia4 sites
- Sellaea4 sites
- Textulariidae4 sites
- Actinastrea3 sites
- Bacinella3 sites
- Bryozoa3 sites
- Caprina3 sites
- Caprinuloidea3 sites
- Echinidae3 sites
- Heteraster3 sites
- Holectypus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 64 sites for Orbitolina, 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
46 references- Upper Aptian-Albian rudist bivalves from northern Sinai, Egypt19
- Analyse biostratigraphique et paléontologique de l'albien marin d'Estremadura (Portugal)11
- Recherches géologiques sur le Crétacé inférieur de l'Estremadura (Portugal)11
- Palaeontology of the 1985 Geotraverse, Lhasa to Golmud9
- Cenomanian Rudist-dominated shelf-margin limestones from the Panormide Carbonate Platform (Sicily, Italy): facies analysis and sequence stratigraphy8
- Sequence Stratigraphy and Rudist Facies Development of the Upper Barremian-Lower Cenomanian Platform, Northern Sinai, Egypt7
- Upper Aptian-Lower Albian Mural Formation: stratigraphy, biostratigraphy and depositional cycles on the Sonoran shelf, northern Mexico7
- Decouverte des Algues Floridees du “Facies de Vimport” dans l'Albien des Monts Bakony (Hongrie) et donnees biostratigraphiques nouvelles sur le Mesocretace Hongrois7
- Cretaceous rudists of Boeotia, Central Greece6
- Note sur la stratigraphie et la paléontologie de l'Aptien de Bordj Oultem, région de Bou Sâada (Dép. d'Alger), Algérie6
- Un faciès de type falun dans le Cénomanien basal de Charente-Maritime (France)4
- Aptian-Albian Carbonate Platforms: Central Basque-Cantabrian Basin, Northern Spain3
Each of the 147 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. 34 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 Orbitolina
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Larry D. Moore
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Orbitolina 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, “Orbitolina”
- 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 itOrbitolininae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. D'Orbigny 1850