Pseudoasaphus
Searched as Pseudoasaphus tecticaudatus tecticaudatus. The Paleobiology Database treats Pseudoasaphus as the accepted name.
Pseudoasaphus is an extinct genus of trilobites from the Ordovician.

Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- AsaphidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Trilobita
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Asaphida
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Asaphida
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Asaphidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 4.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 464.3 Mya and 459.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Pseudoasaphus 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
3 occurrences- Ordovician100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Pseudoasaphus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Pseudoasaphus and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Pseudoasaphus and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
230 taxa- Illaenus10 sites
- Remopleurides9 sites
- Euprimites7 sites
- Steusloffia7 sites
- Glyptograptus6 sites
- Lituites6 sites
- Trinodus6 sites
- Ancistroceras5 sites
- Asaphus5 sites
- Christiania5 sites
- Climacograptus5 sites
- Echinosphaerites5 sites
- Nileus5 sites
- Ogygiocaris5 sites
- Tallinnella5 sites
- Telephina5 sites
- Bronteopsis4 sites
- Conchoprimitia4 sites
- Dicellograptus4 sites
- Glossograptus4 sites
- Grorudia4 sites
- Laccochilina4 sites
- Ogmasaphus4 sites
- Paraceraurus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Pseudoasaphus, 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
1 referenceEach 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Pseudoasaphus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Didier Descouens
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pseudoasaphus 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
- 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 itAsaphidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schmidt 1901