Washitaster
via iDigBio · CC BY-NC-SA · via iDigBio. 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
- HemiasteridaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, detritivorePBDB, for Spatangoida
- Life habit
- shallow infaunalPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Spatangoida
Time the record covers
At most 13 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 113.2 Mya and 100.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Washitaster on record, most of them in the Early 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
2 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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
2 formations
- Denison Formation · Washita Group1
- Tucumcari Formation1
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The named rock units Washitaster has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Washitaster and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Washitaster and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
73 taxa- Lima2 sites
- Lima wacoensis2 sites
- Pinna2 sites
- Plicatula2 sites
- Serpula2 sites
- Turritella seriatimgranulata2 sites
- Amberleya1 site
- Aphrodina1 site
- Calliostoma cragini1 site
- Camptonectes virgatus1 site
- Ceratostreon1 site
- Cinulia1 site
- Coelodus1 site
- Coelosmilia texana1 site
- Crassatellina1 site
- Cretodus1 site
- Cribratina1 site
- Cymatoceras1 site
- Cyprimeria1 site
- Dentalium (Dentalium)1 site
- Drepanochilus1 site
- Epiaster whitei1 site
- Euspira1 site
- Exogyra americana1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Washitaster, 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
2 references- Nearshore fauna of the Tucumcari Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Albian), Quay County, New Mexico1
- The Mesozoic Echinodermata of the United States1
Each of the 2 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. 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 Washitaster
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC BY-NC-SA
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan of Washitaster 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHemiasteridae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.