Tentaculita
Tentaculita is an extinct class of lophophorates ranging from the Early Ordovician to the Middle Jurassic. They were suspension feeders with a near worldwide distribution. For a more thorough discussion, see Tentaculites.

Wilson44691 · Public Domain · 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
- LophotrochozoaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 353 million years on record.
The record covers at least 505.3 Mya to 152.21 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 509.7 Mya to 149.2 Mya.
2,363 occurrences of Tentaculita on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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
2,363 occurrences- Cambrianunder 1%
- Ordovician10%
- Silurian20%
- Devonian60%
- Carboniferous2%
- Permianunder 1%
- Early Triassic7%
- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
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
488 formations
- Wordie Creek Formation88
- Waynesville Formation56
- Silica Formation · Traverse Group45
- Slite Beds Formation38
- Ivane Horizon Formation35
- Daleje Shale Formation · Daleje and Hlubocepy beds Group32
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The named rock units Tentaculita has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 464 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 272 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tentaculita and its relatives
DevonianWhere Tentaculita and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
1,987 taxa- Tentaculites130 sites
- Crinoidea75 sites
- Cornulites70 sites
- Lingula61 sites
- Spirorbis41 sites
- Modiolopsis39 sites
- Camarotoechia37 sites
- Nuculites37 sites
- Bryozoa33 sites
- Fenestella32 sites
- Leptaena32 sites
- Hallopora31 sites
- Ctenodonta30 sites
- Orbiculoidea29 sites
- Pterinea27 sites
- Fistulipora25 sites
- Trepostomata23 sites
- Archaeogastropoda22 sites
- Bivalvia22 sites
- Conularia22 sites
- Flexicalymene22 sites
- Ostracoda22 sites
- Rafinesquina22 sites
- Salopina conservatrix22 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,388 sites for Tentaculita, and this reads 240 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
365 references- Silurian tentaculitids from Gotland and Scania133
- Boucek, 1964118
- Additions to the Eo-Triassic invertebrate fauna of east Greenland86
- The Bohemian Lower Devonian Stages83
- Gradient ecology of a biotic invasion: biofacies of the type Cincinnatian Series (Upper Ordovician), Cincinnati, Ohio region, USA78
- Tentaculites of the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian of Poland61
- Trilobiten des juengeren Siluriums sowie des Unter- und Mitteldevons. I. Mit Beitraegen zur Silur-Devon-Stratigraphie einiger Gebiete Marokkos und Oberfrankens46
- The relationship between sedimentary facies and faunal associations in the Llandovery siliclastic Ross Brook Formation, Arisaig, Nova Scotia45
- The Malvinokaffric realm in the Devonian of Brazil44
- Devonian rocks of the Lake Winnipegosis - Lake Manitoba outcrop belt, Manitoba42
- Devonian tentaculitids of east-central Alaska; systematics and biostratigraphic significance38
- Brachiopods and their relation to facies development in the lower and Middle Devonian of Nandan, Guangxi, South China37
Each of the 2,363 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. 353 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 Tentaculita
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Wilson44691
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tentaculita 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Tentaculita”
- 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 itLophotrochozoa through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Boucek 1964