Tunicata

Tunicates are marine invertebrates belonging to the subphylum Tunicata. This grouping is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords. The subphylum was at one time called Urochordata, and the term urochordates is still sometimes used for these animals.

Tunicata

Nhobgood Nick Hobgood · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
Also called
tunicatePBDB
Sits inside
ChordataPBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
low-level epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 515 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 521 Mya to 0 Mya.

Cambrian — about 9 of 184 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 0 of 184 occurrencesSilurian — about 1 of 184 occurrencesDevonian — about 0 of 184 occurrencesCarboniferous — about 0 of 184 occurrencesPermian — about 23 of 184 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 184 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 184 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 5 of 184 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 184 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 184 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 184 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 184 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 184 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 184 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 184 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 184 occurrencesMiocene — about 75 of 184 occurrencesPliocene — about 19 of 184 occurrencesPleistocene — about 52 of 184 occurrences531–514 Mya — about 3 occurrences514–496 Mya — about 6 occurrences461–443 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences443–425 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences283–266 Mya — about 7 occurrences266–248 Mya — about 16 occurrences248–230 Mya — about 5 occurrences35–18 Mya — about 13 occurrences18–0 Mya — about 133 occurrences516 Mya129 ka531 Mya0 Mya

184 occurrences of Tunicata on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

184 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

14 formations

Balang — 28.42°N, 109.42°ECassian — 46.63°N, 12.21°ECapitan — 32.19°N, 104.36°WCapitan — 32.29°N, 104.35°WSisophon — 12.86°N, 103.02°ESisophon — 13.05°N, 103.06°EPatrick Burn — 55.65°N, 3.92°WChangxing — 29.92°N, 106.43°EMaotianshan Shale — 24.92°N, 102.48°ESkiathos — 38.85°N, 24.50°ESurmaq — 31.04°N, 52.91°EYuanshan — 24.84°N, 102.41°EAli Bashi — 38.98°N, 45.53°EJulfa — 39.45°N, 45.23°EAli Bashi — 39.54°N, 45.43°EMarjum — 39.27°N, 113.31°W

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The named rock units Tunicata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 156 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Tunicata and its relatives

Miocene

Where Tunicata and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

831 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 168 sites for Tunicata, 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

26 references

Each of the 184 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. 14 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 Tunicata

Credit
Nhobgood Nick Hobgood
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tunicata 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 itChordata through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1816