Compacoleus

Not Compacoleus. This is Arctonoe fragilis (Baird, 1863), a relative.
Collier Sparks · CC BY-NC 4.0 · 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
- PlumulitidaePBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Machaeridia
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Machaeridia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Machaeridia
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Polychaeta
Time the record covers
At most 11 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 443.1 Mya and 432.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Compacoleus on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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- Silurian100%
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
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The named rock units Compacoleus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Compacoleus and its relatives
SilurianWhere Compacoleus and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
12 taxa- Lepidocoleus2 sites
- Turrilepas2 sites
- Bumastinae1 site
- Calymene (Calymene)1 site
- Calymene blumenbachii1 site
- Cheirurinae1 site
- Ligiscus smithi1 site
- Oculocystis monobrachiolata1 site
- Paracybantyx occidentalis1 site
- Scharyia1 site
- Scotoharpes raaschi1 site
- Warburgellinae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Compacoleus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- Machaeridians from the Lower Silurian (Llandowery, Telychian) of Shorpshire, England1
- Silurian trilobites from southwestern Alaska1
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 Arctonoe fragilis (Baird, 1863)
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Collier Sparks
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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 itPlumulitidae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.