Brissopsis

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- BrissidaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, detritivorePBDB, for Spatangoida
- Life habit
- shallow infaunalPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Spatangoida
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Spatangoida
Time the record covers
At least 40 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka.
52 occurrences of Brissopsis on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
52 occurrences- Eocene16%
- Oligocene14%
- Miocene53%
- Pliocene12%
- Pleistocene6%
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
31 formations
- Mokattam Formation4
- Pakaurangi Formation3
- Pietra Leccese Formation2
- Port Campbell Limestone Formation2
- Borutta Formation2
- Koshiba Formation2
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The named rock units Brissopsis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Brissopsis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Brissopsis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
424 taxa- Schizaster11 sites
- Clypeaster7 sites
- Spatangus7 sites
- Echinolampas6 sites
- Lovenia5 sites
- Amusium3 sites
- Dentalium3 sites
- Echinocyamus3 sites
- Ostrea3 sites
- Rhodophyta3 sites
- Aequipecten2 sites
- Asteroidea2 sites
- Balanus2 sites
- Bryozoa2 sites
- Conus2 sites
- Cyclaster2 sites
- Eupatagus2 sites
- Genocidaris2 sites
- Hemiaster2 sites
- Hemiaster (Holanthus)2 sites
- Hemipatagus2 sites
- Lindapecten plurinominis2 sites
- Lucina2 sites
- Metalia2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 42 sites for Brissopsis, 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
28 references- The echinoid fauna from Japan and adjacent regions, Part II7
- Tertiary brissid echinoids of southern Australia6
- Cenozoic Spatangoid Echinoids from New Zealand5
- Tawadros, 20014
- Echinoid assemblages from the early Miocene of Funtanazza (Sardinia): A tool for reconstructing depositional environments along a shelf gradient3
- Palaeoecology and taphonomy of spatangoid-dominated echinoid assemblages: A case study from the Early-Middle Miocene of Sardinia, Italy2
- Diversity patterns and biostratigraphy of Cenozoic echinodems from Florida2
- Neogene echinoids from Salento (Apulia, Southern Italy)2
- Cenozoic irregular echinoids of the Eastern United States2
- Paleontological studies on the Neogene (Miocene and Quaternary) carbonate rocks of Rabigh-Ubhur areas, Red Sea coast, Saudia Arabia1
- A Late Miocene brissid echinoid from Denmark1
- Two new Middle Miocene spatangoids (Echinoidea) from the Murray Basin, South Australia1
Each of the 52 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. 16 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 Brissopsis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itBrissidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1840