Braarudosphaera
Searched as Braarudosphaera bigelowi. The Paleobiology Database treats Braarudosphaera as the accepted name.
Braarudosphaera is a genus of coccolithophores that produce pentagonal structures reminiscent of dodecahedra.

Mats & Maria Kuylenstierna, Bengt Karlson (University of Gothenburg, Marine botany, via SMHI) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- BraarudosphaeraceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Haptophyta
- Life habit
- planktonic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Haptophyta
- Motility
- passively mobilePBDB, for Haptophyta
- Environment
- oceanic,oligotrophic,marine,brackishPBDB, for Haptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 105 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 15.98 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
20 occurrences of Braarudosphaera on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
20 occurrences- Early Cretaceous13%
- Late Cretaceous27%
- Paleocene31%
- Eocene18%
- Oligocene1%
- Miocene10%
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
8 formations
- Jagüel Formation6
- Pedro Luro Formation3
- Brockenhurst Beds Formation1
- Langental Beds Formation1
- Porters Creek Formation1
- Clayton Formation1
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The named rock units Braarudosphaera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Braarudosphaera and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Braarudosphaera and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
887 taxa- Coccolithus pelagicus155 sites
- Reticulofenestra129 sites
- Gephyrocapsa118 sites
- Helicosphaera carteri107 sites
- Pontosphaera95 sites
- Calcidiscus leptoporus90 sites
- Umbilicosphaera73 sites
- Reticulofenestra minuta67 sites
- Discoaster66 sites
- Pseudoemiliania57 sites
- Cyclicargolithus floridanus50 sites
- Discoaster brouweri50 sites
- Syracosphaera44 sites
- Calcidiscus macintyrei42 sites
- Sphenolithus moriformis41 sites
- Reticulofenestra pseudoumbilicus40 sites
- Sphenolithus39 sites
- Dictyococcites34 sites
- Thoracosphaera32 sites
- Umbilicosphaera jafari32 sites
- Coccolithus30 sites
- Sphenolithus abies30 sites
- Rhabdosphaera29 sites
- Emiliania23 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 399 sites for Braarudosphaera, and this reads 240 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
9 references- A tsunami deposit at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in the Neuquén Basin of Argentina6
- Calcareous nannofossil events in the late cretaceous at Pedro Luro borehole, Colorado basin, Argentina4
- Stratigraphy of the Maikop Group and Pteropoda Beds in Northern Azerbaijan2
- The biostratigraphy of the Hauterivian/Barremian Boundary Beds in the Krížna Nappe, Western Carpathians (Czechoslovakia)2
- Biostratigraphy and paleoecology of lower Paleozoic, upper Cretaceous, and lower Tertiary rocks in U.S. Geological Survey New Madrid test wells, Southeastern Missouri2
- Primera ingresión atlántica en Peninsula de Valdés: Bioestratigrafía, paleoambiente y paleoclima del Daniano1
- Age of the Comfort Member of the Castle Hayne Formation, North Carolina1
- Eocene marine sediments in the Sperrgebiet, South West Africa1
- The upper Eocene Brockenhurst bed1
Each of the 20 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 Braarudosphaera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mats & Maria Kuylenstierna, Bengt Karlson (University of Gothenburg, Marine botany, via SMHI)
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Braarudosphaera 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.
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 itBraarudosphaeraceae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Deflandre 1947