Acastella
Acastella is an extinct genus of trilobite. The genus contains six species being A. herberti, A. jacquemonti, A. prima, A. roualti, A. tanzidensis and A. tiro.

via GBIF · CC BY-NC 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- AcastidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phacopina
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Acastidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At least 9.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 413.02 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 426.7 Mya to 393.47 Mya.
112 occurrences of Acastella on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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
112 occurrencesThese 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
33 formations
- Bostów Formation10
- Kess Kess Formation8
- Saint-Cenere Formation6
- Luesma Formation5
- Nogueras Formation5
- Zeimlet Formation4
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The named rock units Acastella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 32 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acastella and its relatives
DevonianWhere Acastella and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
475 taxa- Howellella20 sites
- Isorthis16 sites
- Crinoidea15 sites
- Nuculites14 sites
- Warburgella (Rugulites) rugulosa14 sites
- Camarotoechia13 sites
- Mesodouvillina12 sites
- Platyorthis12 sites
- Iridistrophia11 sites
- Lanceomyonia11 sites
- Atrypa10 sites
- Brachiopoda10 sites
- Grammysia10 sites
- Icriodus10 sites
- Icriodus woschmidti10 sites
- Digonus roemeri9 sites
- Monograptus9 sites
- Orthoceras9 sites
- Ostracoda9 sites
- Tentaculitida9 sites
- Trilobita9 sites
- Bivalvia8 sites
- Bryozoa8 sites
- Calymene8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 68 sites for Acastella, 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
27 references- Poland19
- Correlation of the African Silurian rocks15
- Upper SiIurian-Lower Devonian Chitinozoa from the subsurface of southeastern Poland14
- Le domaine de l'Anti-Atlas au Maroc8
- Die Acastavinae und Asteropyginae (Trilobita) Keltiberiens (NE-Spanien)7
- La limite Lochkovien-Praguien (Devonien inferieur) dans le Massif armoricain: especes index et correlations6
- Animal and plant communities of Podolia5
- Lower Silurian to Lower Devonian communities from the Armorican Massif (western France) and Artois (northern France)5
- Podolia5
- Devonian trilobites of the southern Cantabrian Mountains (Northern Spain) with a systematic description of the Asteropyginae4
- Polish Ludlow-Lower Devonian communities3
- Spain3
Each of the 112 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. 15 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 Acastella
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- via GBIF
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Acastella”
- 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 itAcastidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Reed 1925)