Tethyaster

Tethyaster is a genus of echinoderms belonging to the family Astropectinidae.

Tethyaster

FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute · CC BY 2.0 · 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
AstropectinidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Astropectinidae
Life habit
semi-infaunal, solitaryPBDB, for Astropectinidae
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Astropectinidae
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
Environment
marinePBDB, for Astropectinidae

Time the record covers

At least 105 million years on record.

The record covers at least 161.5 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 174.7 Mya to 48.07 Mya.

Early Jurassic — about 0 of 7 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 2 of 7 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 0 of 7 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 7 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 7 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 7 occurrences177–173 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences173–168 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences168–164 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences164–160 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences138–133 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences133–129 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences103–98 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences94–89 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences59–54 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 1 occurrence50–46 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences161.5 Mya56 Mya177 Mya46 Mya

7 occurrences of Tethyaster on record. 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

7 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

5 formations

Marnes de Foncouverte — 43.15°N, 2.57°EMarnes de Foncouverte — 43.17°N, 2.70°ECarmel — 38.28°N, 111.48°WCarmel — 37.20°N, 113.58°WLe Mans — 48.00°N, 0.21°ECardium — 49.33°N, 114.02°WMulichinco — 37.25°S, 69.78°W

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

Found in the same rock

43 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Tethyaster, 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

5 references

Each of the 7 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 Tethyaster

Credit
FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tethyaster 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 itAstropectinidae through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sladen 1889