Wapkia

Wapkia is an extinct genus of sea sponge with radial sclerites, known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. It was first described in 1920 by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 32 specimens of Wapkia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.06% of the community.

Wapkia

Smithsonian Institution · No restrictions · 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
WapkiidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 51 million years on record.

The record covers at least 512.1 Mya to 461.1 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 458.2 Mya.

Cambrian — about 15 of 16 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 1 of 16 occurrencesOrdovician540–538 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences538–535 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences535–532 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences532–529 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences529–526 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences526–524 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences524–521 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences521–518 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences518–515 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences515–512 Mya — about 1 occurrence512–510 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences510–507 Mya — about 7 occurrences507–504 Mya — about 4 occurrences504–501 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences501–499 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences499–496 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences462–459 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences459–457 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences512.1 Mya461.1 Mya540 Mya457 Mya

16 occurrences of Wapkia on record, most of them in the Cambrian. 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

16 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

6 formations

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WBurgess Shale — 51.33°N, 116.35°WSinsk — 61.08°N, 126.58°EDuchesnay — 51.10°N, 115.95°WYu'anshan — 24.87°N, 102.83°ELlanfawr Mudstone — 52.24°N, 3.36°WBalang — 28.42°N, 109.42°E

Loading coastlines…

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

Wapkia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Wapkia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

279 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Wapkia, 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

8 references

Each of the 16 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 Wapkia

Credit
Smithsonian Institution
Licence
No restrictions
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Wapkia 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

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 itWapkiidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1920