Chiasmolithus
Dr Paul R. Bown · 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
- CoccolithaceaePBDB
- 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 89 million years on record.
The record covers at least 89.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,585 occurrences of Chiasmolithus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
1,585 occurrences- Late Cretaceousunder 1%
- Paleocene10%
- Eocene70%
- Oligocene11%
- Miocene3%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistocene5%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
14 formations
- Campo Bola Formation10
- Blue Bluff Formation3
- Kuma Formation3
- Castle Hayne Formation3
- Wadi Esh-Shallala Formation2
- Waipara Greensand Formation1
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The named rock units Chiasmolithus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1,555 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chiasmolithus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Chiasmolithus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
323 taxa- Coccolithus pelagicus195 sites
- Discoaster144 sites
- Sphenolithus moriformis130 sites
- Coccolithus126 sites
- Reticulofenestra108 sites
- Sphenolithus107 sites
- Discoaster deflandrei87 sites
- Cyclicargolithus floridanus75 sites
- Calcidiscus55 sites
- Pontosphaera53 sites
- Dinoflagellata49 sites
- Gephyrocapsa48 sites
- Reticulofenestra pseudoumbilicus48 sites
- Blackites45 sites
- Calcidiscus leptoporus45 sites
- Helicosphaera carteri44 sites
- Clausicoccus43 sites
- Umbilicosphaera40 sites
- Nannotetrina34 sites
- Sphenolithus radians34 sites
- Pseudoemiliania33 sites
- Coronocyclus32 sites
- Zygrhablithus bijugatus32 sites
- Cyclicargolithus28 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 905 sites for Chiasmolithus, 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
56 references- Site U1508170
- Site U1509137
- Site U1410127
- Site U1406118
- Site U1408108
- Site U151089
- Site U133379
- Site U151472
- Site U150769
- Site U140969
- Site U141160
- Site U140757
Each of the 1,585 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. 44 further references are not listed. 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 Chiasmolithus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Dr Paul R. Bown
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chiasmolithus 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 itCoccolithaceae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hay et al. 1966