Asterias

Asterias is a genus of the Asteriidae family of sea stars. It includes several of the best-known species of sea stars, including the (Atlantic) common starfish, Asterias rubens, and the northern Pacific seastar, Asterias amurensis. The genus contains a total of eight species in all. All species have five arms and are native to shallow oceanic areas of cold to temperate parts of the Holarctic. These starfish have planktonic larvae. Asterias amurensis is an invasive species in Australia and can in some years become a pest in the Japanese mariculture industry.

Asterias

Hans Hillewaert · 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
AsteriinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Forcipulatida
Life habit
low-level epifaunal, solitaryPBDB, for Forcipulatida
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Forcipulatida
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
Environment
marine,brackishPBDB, for Forcipulatida

Time the record covers

At least 199 million years on record.

The record covers at least 199.5 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 8 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 1 of 8 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 1 of 8 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 8 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 8 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 8 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 8 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesPleistocene — about 4 of 8 occurrences205–199 Mya — about 1 occurrence171–164 Mya — about 1 occurrence14–6.8 Mya — about 2 occurrences6.8–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences199.5 Mya129 ka205 Mya0 Mya

8 occurrences of Asterias on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

8 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

4 formations

Talbot — 38.07°N, 76.36°WMarnes de Jamoigne — 49.72°N, 5.22°EEntre Rios — 33.72°S, 59.25°WSan Pablo — 38.02°N, 122.13°W

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The named rock units Asterias has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Asterias and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Asterias and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

145 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Asterias, 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

5 references

Each of the 8 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 Asterias

Credit
Hans Hillewaert
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Asterias 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 itAsteriinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758