Walcottoceras
Walcottoceras is a genus of cephalopods from the Lower Ordovician included in the ellesmerocerid family Protocycloceratidae according to Rousseau Flower in 1964.

Charles D. Walcott (1850–1927) · 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
- EllesmeroceratidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Life habit
- nektobenthic, solitaryPBDB, for Ellesmerocerida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ellesmerocerida
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Ellesmerocerida
Time the record covers
At least 3.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 486.85 Mya to 483.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 495.2 Mya to 477.1 Mya.
7 occurrences of Walcottoceras on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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- Cambrian34%
- Ordovician66%
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
- Siyangshan Formation2
- Great Meadows Formation1
- Chushina Formation1
- Survey Peak Formation1
- St. Charles Formation1
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The named rock units Walcottoceras has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Walcottoceras and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Walcottoceras and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
33 taxa- Ribeiria lucan3 sites
- Robsonoceras robsonense3 sites
- Ectenolites2 sites
- ? Leiocorphyge lobata n. sp.1 site
- Acaroceras1 site
- Annoceras costatum1 site
- Antacaroceras1 site
- Archinacella magna1 site
- Archinacella parva1 site
- Buehleroceras1 site
- Clarkoceras1 site
- Clarkoceras ruedemanni1 site
- Clelandia1 site
- Conocerina1 site
- Ectenolites clelandi1 site
- Ectenolites sinuatus1 site
- Ellesmeroceras indomitum1 site
- Eremoceras1 site
- Finkelnburgia1 site
- Keraiaceras1 site
- Levisoceras1 site
- Lotagnostus punctatus1 site
- Macluritella uniangulata1 site
- Palaeacmaea1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Walcottoceras, 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
3 references- Cambrian and Ozarkian Brachiopoda, Ozarkian Cephalopods and Notostraca4
- The Cambrian trilobites of western Zhejiang2
- Competitive algal colonization of peritidal flats in a schizohaline environment; the lower Ordovician of New York1
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 Walcottoceras
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles D. Walcott (1850–1927)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itEllesmeroceratidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ulrich and Foerste 1936