Archaeocyathus

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · 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
- ArchaeocyathidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Archaeocyatha
- Life habit
- intermediate-level epifaunalPBDB, for Archaeocyatha
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Archaeocyatha
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Porifera
Time the record covers
At least 6.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 516 Mya to 509.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 521 Mya to 505.3 Mya.
132 occurrences of Archaeocyathus 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
132 occurrences- Cambrian100%
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
33 formations
- Usa Formation13
- Chekhan Formation13
- Puerto Blanco Formation · Fallotaspis Group11
- Poleta Formation10
- Upper Monok Formation8
- Upper Shangan Formation8
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The named rock units Archaeocyathus 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. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Archaeocyathus and its relatives
CambrianWhere Archaeocyathus and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
274 taxa- Protopharetra12 sites
- Renalcis12 sites
- Irinaecyathus9 sites
- Dictyocyathus6 sites
- Claruscoscinus5 sites
- Cordilleracyathus5 sites
- Epiphyton5 sites
- Ethmophyllum whitneyi5 sites
- Girvanella5 sites
- Metaldetes5 sites
- Paranacyathus5 sites
- Pluralicyathus5 sites
- Rotundocyathus5 sites
- Ajacicyathus4 sites
- Archaeolynthus4 sites
- Sibirecyathus4 sites
- Ajacicyathus nevadensis3 sites
- Carinacyathus3 sites
- Claruscoscinus billingsi3 sites
- Clathricoscinus3 sites
- Flindersicyathus aenigmatus3 sites
- Hyolithellus3 sites
- Leptosocyathus3 sites
- Nochoroicyathus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 40 sites for Archaeocyathus, 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- Stratigrafiya i arkheotsiaty nizhnego kembriya Altaye-Sayanskoy skladchatoy oblasti [Lower Cambrian stratigraphy and archaeocyatha of the Altay-Sayan fold belt]58
- Biostratigraphy of the Kiya River section. - Early Cambrian Archaeocyaths and spicular sponges from the Kiya River section (Kuznetsk Alatau)13
- Lower Cambrian bioconstructions in Northwestern Mexico (Sonora). Depositional setting, paleoecology and systematics of Archaeocyaths10
- New taxa of archaeocyathids from the Lower Cambrian of Central China4
- Fossils from the Lower Cambrian of the MacKenzie Mountains (Canada)4
- Archaeocyatha from the MacKenzie and Cassiar Mountains, Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory and British Columbia4
- Stratigraphic distribution of archaeocyathids in the Silver Peak Range and the White and Inyo Mountains, western Nevada and Eastern California4
- Archaeocyatha from the Lower Cambrian of Inyo County, California4
- Archaeocyathid fossils from the Lower Cambrian Jianchang Formation of the southern Liaodong Peninsula3
- Arkheotsiaty i vodorosli nizhnego kembriya basseyna r. Egiyn-Gol (Severo-zapadnaya Mongoliya). The lower cambrian archaeocyatha and algae of the Egiin-Gol river basin (the North-West Mongolia).3
- Cambrian reefs in the lower Poleta Formation: a new occurrence of a thick archaeocyathan reef near Gold Point, Nevada, USA2
- Cambrian of the Hunan-Guizhou region, south China2
Each of the 132 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 Archaeocyathus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Archaeocyathus 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 itArchaeocyathidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Billings 1861