Orthospirifer

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- SpinocyrtiidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Spiriferida
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Spiriferida
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Spiriferida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Rhynchonellata
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At least 40 million years on record.
The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 382.31 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 426.7 Mya to 372.15 Mya.
136 occurrences of Orthospirifer on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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
136 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
17 formations
- Geneseo Formation · Genesee Group79
- Little Cedar Formation · Cedar Valley Group11
- Tully Formation · Tully Group10
- Moscow Formation · Hamilton Group9
- Coralville Formation · Cedar Valley Group4
- Lithograph City Formation · Cedar Valley Group3
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The named rock units Orthospirifer has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Orthospirifer and its relatives
DevonianWhere Orthospirifer and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
252 taxa- Mucrospirifer mucronatus47 sites
- Cupularostrum eximia45 sites
- Tropidoleptus carinatus43 sites
- Tylothyris mesacostalis43 sites
- Actinopteria boydi40 sites
- Devonochonetes scitulus35 sites
- Paracyclas28 sites
- Nuculoidea corbuliformis27 sites
- Palaeoneilo constricta27 sites
- Crinoidea26 sites
- Katabuporhynchus mesacostalis17 sites
- Cyrtina hamiltonensis16 sites
- Cypricardella15 sites
- Leptodesma spinigerum15 sites
- Spinatrypa15 sites
- Tentaculites15 sites
- Grammysia14 sites
- Spirifer14 sites
- Goniophora13 sites
- Leptodesma (Leiopteria)13 sites
- Palaeoneilo emarginata13 sites
- Palaeoneilo filosa12 sites
- Cranaena11 sites
- Cypricardella bellistriata10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 106 sites for Orthospirifer, 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
17 references- Work with Thayer collections, Yale Peabody Accession 7112, published, in part, "New perspectives on transitions between ecological-evolutionary subunits in the "type interval" for coordinated stasis", James J Zambito IV, Carlton E Brett, Gordon C Baird, Sarah E Kolbe, Arnold I Miller; Paleobiology43
- Classification and distribution of the Hamilton and Chemung series of central and eastern New York, Part 218
- Faunal signatures of Middle-Upper Devonian depositional sequences and sea level fluctuations in the Iowa Basin: US Midcontinent13
- Field notes and samples, published, in part, "New perspectives on transitions between ecological-evolutionary subunits in the "type interval" for coordinated stasis", James J Zambito IV, Carlton E Brett, Gordon C Baird, Sarah E Kolbe, Arnold I Miller; Paleobiology12
- The classification and distribution of the Hamilton and Chemung series of central and eastern New York12
- Field notes and samples, published, in part, "New perspectives on transitions between ecological-evolutionary subunits in the "type interval" for coordinated stasis", James J Zambito IV, Carlton E Brett, Gordon C Baird, Sarah E Kolbe, Arnold I Miller; Paleobiology11
- Late Devonian marine ecosystems of the lower West Falls Group in New York6
- The brachiopod succession of the Late Givetian-Frasnian of Iowa5
- Tully Formation of New York4
- New Asteropyginae (Trilobita) from the Devonian of Afghanistan3
- Middle Devonian (Givetian) trilobite clusters from eastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois2
- Paleoecologia, comunidades bentonicas y sucesion paleoambiental en el Grupo Rio Cachiri, Devonico, Sierra de Perija, Venezueal2
Each of the 136 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. 5 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 Orthospirifer
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Orthospirifer 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itSpinocyrtiidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pitrat 1975