Archaeaspinus
Archaeaspinus fedonkini is an extinct proarticulate from the Late Ediacaran period.

Masahiro miyasaka · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- CephalozoaPBDB
- Diet
- osmotrophPBDB
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Archaeaspinus on record. 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
4 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
4 formations
- Rawnsley Quartzite Formation · Wilpena Group1
- Zimnegory Formation · Valdai Group1
- Verkhovka Formation · Ust-Pinega Group1
- Yorga Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Archaeaspinus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
30 taxa- Dickinsonia costata3 sites
- Kimberella quadrata3 sites
- Andiva ivantsovi2 sites
- Archaeaspis fedonkini2 sites
- Cyanorus singularis2 sites
- Parvancorina minchami2 sites
- Temnoxa molliuscula2 sites
- Tribrachidium heraldicum2 sites
- Vendia janae2 sites
- Yorgia waggoneri2 sites
- <Disc>1 site
- <Frond>1 site
- Anfesta stankovskii1 site
- Animalia1 site
- Arkarua1 site
- Arkarua adami1 site
- Armilifera parva1 site
- Armillifera parva1 site
- Cephalonega stepanovi1 site
- Charniodiscus1 site
- Dickinsonia tenuis1 site
- Inaria karli1 site
- Ivovicia1 site
- Ivovicia regulosa1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Archaeaspinus, 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
4 references- Small Vendian Transversely Articulated Fossils1
- Assemblage palaeoecology of the Ediacara biota: The unabridged edition?1
- New proarticulata from the Vendian of the Arkhangel'sk region1
- Vendia and Other Precambrian "Arthropods"1
Each of the 4 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 Archaeaspinus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Masahiro miyasaka
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Archaeaspinus 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 itCephalozoa through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ivantsov 2007