Vetulina
Vetulina is a genus of sea sponges in the subclass Heteroscleromorpha. It is the only genus in the monotypic family Vetulinidae and the monotypic order Sphaerocladina.

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
- VetulininaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Lithistida
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Lithistida
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Lithistida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Porifera
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lithistida
Time the record covers
At most 3.9 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 33.9 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Vetulina on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
1 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Vetulina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Vetulina and its relatives
EoceneWhere Vetulina and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
18 taxa- Agelas sp.1 site
- Alectona1 site
- Bubarida indet.1 site
- cf. Lerouxia digitata1 site
- Diplastrella megastellata1 site
- Ectyonopsis sp.1 site
- Erylus1 site
- Geodia1 site
- Lithistidae indet.1 site
- Pachastrellidae1 site
- Phymaraphiniidae1 site
- Placinolopha sarai1 site
- Placospongia sp.1 site
- Samus1 site
- Stelletta1 site
- Theonellidae1 site
- Triptolemma1 site
- Zyzzya sp.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Vetulina, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 1 occurrence 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 Vetulina
- 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 Vetulina 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, “Vetulina”
- 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 itVetulininae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.