Carolinites

Searched as Carolinites angustagena sibiricus. The Paleobiology Database treats Carolinites as the accepted name.

Carolinites is a genus of telephinid trilobite from the Lower and Middle Ordovician. Carolinites had a pantropical distribution, and there is evidence that it lived in upper parts of the water column. Thanks to its free-swimming lifestyle, Carolinites was one of the most widely-distributed trilobites, similar in habits to modern hyperiid amphipods. Due to its large eyes, Carolinites was not very streamlined, so it was probably a relatively slow head-first swimmer which relied on enrollment for defense.

Carolinites

NGPezz · CC BY 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
TelephinidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
nektonicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Telephinidae
Environment
marinePBDB, for Trilobita

Time the record covers

At most 1 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 471.3 Mya and 470.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Ordovician — about 2 of 2 occurrencesOrdovician471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–471 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471–470 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences470–470 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences470–470 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences470–470 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences471.8 Mya469.8 Mya

2 occurrences of Carolinites on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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

2 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

1 formation

Antelope Valley — 36.88°N, 116.66°W

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The named rock units Carolinites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Carolinites and its relatives

Ordovician

Where Carolinites and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.

Found in the same rock

818 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 140 sites for Carolinites, 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

1 reference

Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Carolinites

Credit
NGPezz
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Carolinites 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 itTelephinidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kobayashi 1940