Salterolithus
Salterolithus is a genus of trilobites of the order Asaphida. It is in the family Trinucleidae and was named after British geologist J.W. Salter.

AtmosPhysicist · 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
- TrinucleidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Trinucleidae
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 3.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 458.2 Mya and 455 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Salterolithus 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Salterolithus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Salterolithus and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Salterolithus and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
41 taxa- Reuscholithus2 sites
- Acanthograptus1 site
- Allonychia1 site
- Amphigraptus1 site
- Barrandeocarpus jaekeli1 site
- Bicuspina1 site
- Chonetes1 site
- Climacograptus1 site
- Corynoides1 site
- Cryptograptus1 site
- Cryptolithus1 site
- Dalmanella1 site
- Dicranograptus1 site
- Didymograptus1 site
- Eridotrypa1 site
- Flexicalymene1 site
- Glyptograptus1 site
- Glyptorthis1 site
- Graptolithina1 site
- Heterorthina1 site
- Lingula1 site
- Marrolithus1 site
- Nemagraptus1 site
- Onnia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Salterolithus, 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- Upper Ordovician trilobites of zonal value in south-east Shropshire2
- Paleozoic Rocks of Merida Andes, Venezuela1
Each 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. 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 Salterolithus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- AtmosPhysicist
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Salterolithus 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 itTrinucleidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bancroft 1929