Spirorbis
Searched as Spirorbis caperatus. The Paleobiology Database treats Spirorbis as the accepted name.

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- SerpulidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attached, epibiontPBDB
Time the record covers
At most 17 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 346.7 Mya and 330.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Spirorbis on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
2 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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
- Miller Creek and Wentworth Station Formation · Windsor Group1
- Macumber and White Quarry Formation · Windsor Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Spirorbis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Spirorbis and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Spirorbis and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
3,062 taxa- Crinoidea73 sites
- Fenestella54 sites
- Cornulites52 sites
- Bryozoa51 sites
- Fistulipora45 sites
- Ostracoda44 sites
- Gastropoda43 sites
- Echinoidea42 sites
- Bivalvia36 sites
- Rugosa33 sites
- Brachiopoda32 sites
- Composita32 sites
- Cleiothyridina31 sites
- Rhabdomeson31 sites
- Tentaculites30 sites
- Saffordotaxis28 sites
- Strophomena (Strophodonta)27 sites
- Cyrtina26 sites
- Punctospirifer25 sites
- Torynifer25 sites
- Desquamatia24 sites
- Platyceras24 sites
- Rhombopora24 sites
- Chonetes23 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 297 sites for Spirorbis, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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 2 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Spirorbis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Spirorbis 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 itSerpulidae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Daudin 1800