Thaumatoporella

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
- ThaumatoporellalesPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Environment
- hypersaline,marine,brackishPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 185 million years on record.
The record covers at least 241.464 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 48.07 Mya.
176 occurrences of Thaumatoporella on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
176 occurrences- Middle Triassic2%
- Late Triassic15%
- Early Jurassic6%
- Middle Jurassic2%
- Late Jurassic15%
- Early Cretaceous7%
- Late Cretaceous42%
- Paleocene9%
- Eocene3%
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
41 formations
- Trieste Karst Limestone Formation7
- Dachstein Formation4
- Trieste Karst Limestone Formation4
- Upper Tului Formation3
- Plassen Formation2
- Nayband Formation2
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The named rock units Thaumatoporella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 116 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Thaumatoporella and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Thaumatoporella and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
776 taxa- Bacinella irregularis23 sites
- Bivalvia21 sites
- Ostracoda19 sites
- Miliolida18 sites
- Textulariida18 sites
- Bacinella17 sites
- Tubiphytes17 sites
- Aeolisaccus16 sites
- Cayeuxia16 sites
- Lithocodium16 sites
- Ophthalmidium16 sites
- Lithocodium aggregatum15 sites
- Radiomura cautica15 sites
- Solenopora15 sites
- Bryozoa14 sites
- Gastropoda14 sites
- Shamovella obscura14 sites
- Clypeina13 sites
- Glomospira12 sites
- Porifera12 sites
- Soriella bitlisica12 sites
- Echinoidea11 sites
- Ammobaculites10 sites
- Brachiopoda10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 90 sites for Thaumatoporella, 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
88 references- Development of rudist lithosomes in the Coniacian-Lower Campanian carbonate shelves of central-southern Italy: high-energy vs low-energy settings33
- Depositional History of a Paleogene Carbonate Ramp (Western Cephalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece)18
- The development of the mollusc fauna in the Cenomanian of the stratigraphie sequence of Visogliano (Karst of Trieste, Italy)6
- Development of coral–sponge–microbialite reefs in a coated grain‑dominated carbonate ramp (Upper Jurassic, eastern Sardinia, Italy)4
- Lower Jurassic carbonate succession between Predole and Mlačevo, Central Slovenia4
- Cenomanian Rudist-dominated shelf-margin limestones from the Panormide Carbonate Platform (Sicily, Italy): facies analysis and sequence stratigraphy4
- Remarks on the morphological variability of Biradiolites angulosus D'Orbigny in a sector of the Trieste Karst (Italy)4
- Dissecting "Lithiotis" Bivalves: Implications for the Early Jurassic Reef Eclipse3
- Un Modéle de Comblement de Plate-forme Interne Carbonatée: Santonien Supéieur-Campanien des Chaines Ibdriques Nord3
- Contribution à l'étude des algues du Crétacé Inférieur provencal. Interêt stratigraphique3
- Les algues des calcaires aptiens et albiens d'Aquitaine méridionale3
- Zoophycos-like structures associated with dinosaur tracks in a tidal-flat environment: Lower Jurassic (Southern Alps, Italy)2
Each of the 176 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. 76 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 Thaumatoporella
- 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 Thaumatoporella 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 itThaumatoporellales through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pia 1927