Protaraea

via iDigBio · CC BY-NC · 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
- CoccoserididaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feeder, photosymbioticPBDB, for Tabulata
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Tabulata
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Tabulata
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
Time the record covers
At least 24 million years on record.
The record covers at least 457.3 Mya to 432.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 471.3 Mya to 426.7 Mya.
76 occurrences of Protaraea 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
76 occurrences- Ordovician95%
- Silurian5%
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
19 formations
- Liberty Formation22
- Whitewater Formation18
- Valcour Formation · Chazy Group5
- Bardstown Formation3
- Waynesville Formation2
- Georgian Bay Formation2
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The named rock units Protaraea 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.
Protaraea and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Protaraea and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
475 taxa- Trepostomata37 sites
- Hiscobeccus capax33 sites
- Rafinesquina alternata31 sites
- Hebertella occidentalis30 sites
- Streptelasma divaricans28 sites
- Isotelus26 sites
- Bryozoa24 sites
- Strophomena planumbona19 sites
- Plaesiomys subquadratus17 sites
- Platystrophia17 sites
- Grewingkia16 sites
- Strophomena16 sites
- Flexicalymene11 sites
- Holtedahlina sulcata10 sites
- Eochonetes clarksvillensis8 sites
- Lophospira8 sites
- Gastropoda7 sites
- Platystrophia acutilirata7 sites
- Streptelasma7 sites
- Strophomena vetusta7 sites
- Crinoidea6 sites
- Dactylogonia incrassata6 sites
- Favistella6 sites
- Hebertella6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 71 sites for Protaraea, 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- Gradient ecology of a biotic invasion: biofacies of the type Cincinnatian Series (Upper Ordovician), Cincinnati, Ohio region, USA38
- Upper Ordovician faunas of Ontario and Quebec7
- The oldest heliolitids from the early Katian of the East Baltic region6
- The Chazy Formation and its fauna6
- The fossil fauna of the Ordovician in the Cincinnati Region4
- Silurian reefal buildups: Spiti-Kinnaur, Himachal Himalaya, India2
- Quantitative paleoecologic analysis of fossil communities in the Richmond Group2
- The coral horizons and stratigraphy of the upper Richmond Group in Kentucky west of the Cincinnati Arch2
- Diverse endobiotic symbiont fauna from the Late Katian (Late Ordovician) of Estonia1
- Locality 4:4 Karinu Quarry1
- Cambrian to Cretaceous changes in hardground communities1
- The relationships between stromatoporoids and heliolitids1
Each of the 76 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 Protaraea
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC BY-NC
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan of Protaraea 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 itCoccoserididae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Milne-Edwards and Haime 1851