Pseudoniscus

Pseudoniscus is a genus of synziphosurine, a paraphyletic group of fossil chelicerate arthropods. Pseudoniscus was regarded as part of the clade Planaterga. Fossils of the genus have been discovered in deposits of the Silurian period in the United Kingdom, the United States and Estonia. Pseudoniscus is one of the two members of the family Pseudoniscidae, the other being Cyamocephalus.

Pseudoniscus

Junnn11 · CC BY-SA 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
PlanatergaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda

Time the record covers

At most 7.1 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 426.7 Mya and 419.62 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Silurian — about 4 of 4 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 0 of 4 occurrences427–427 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences427–426 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences426–425 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425–424 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences424–423 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences423–422 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences422–422 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences422–422 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences422–422 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences422–421 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences421–421 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences421–421 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences421–420 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences420–420 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences420–420 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences420–420 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences420–419 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences427.2 Mya419.1 Mya

4 occurrences of Pseudoniscus on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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

4 occurrences

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

Fiddlers Green — 42.85°N, 78.80°WVernon Shale — 43.08°N, 77.52°W

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The named rock units Pseudoniscus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Pseudoniscus and its relatives

Silurian

Where Pseudoniscus and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.

Found in the same rock

75 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Pseudoniscus, 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

2 references

Each of the 4 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 Pseudoniscus

Credit
Junnn11
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pseudoniscus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itPlanaterga through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nieszkowski 1859