Vertebrata
Searched as Craniata. The Paleobiology Database treats Vertebrata as the accepted name.
Vertebrates, also called craniates, are animals with a vertebral column and a cranium. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain.

User:Follix User:Jamez42 User:Albert kok User:Tiithunt · CC BY-SA 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
- ChordataPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Time the record covers
At least 512 million years on record.
The record covers at least 512.1 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 525.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
12,000+ occurrences of Vertebrata on record. 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
12,000 occurrences read- Cambrianunder 1%
- Ordovicianunder 1%
- Silurian2%
- Devonian1%
- Carboniferous2%
- Permianunder 1%
- Early Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous1%
- Late Cretaceous15%
- Paleocene35%
- Eocene36%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene3%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistoceneunder 1%
- 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. The read hit its cap, so every figure above is a floor and the shares are of the occurrences read. More on what this infers.
Found in
at least 453 formations
- Willwood Formation2,493
- Fort Union Formation965
- DeBeque Formation744
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group635
- Wasatch Formation550
- Nacimiento Formation474
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The named rock units Vertebrata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. The read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 429 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 1,729 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
2,247 taxa- Anomia argentaria80 sites
- Turritella69 sites
- Bryozoa66 sites
- Nuculana65 sites
- Serpula62 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata60 sites
- Crassatella vadosa58 sites
- Syncyclonema57 sites
- Cubitostrea tecticosta56 sites
- Cymbophora52 sites
- Veniella conradi51 sites
- Crenella serica50 sites
- Ostrea49 sites
- Cliona47 sites
- Corbula47 sites
- Turritella vertebroides46 sites
- Cyprimeria44 sites
- Hamulus onyx44 sites
- Cardium43 sites
- Turritella trilira43 sites
- Camptonectes bubonis42 sites
- Striarca42 sites
- Idonearca capax40 sites
- Caestocorbula (Caestocorbula) crassaplica38 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 851 sites for Vertebrata, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
at least 914 references- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1,272
- Faunal Zonation of the Willwood Formation in the Central Bighorn Basin, Wyoming811
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary758
- Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Piceance Creek Basin. Northwestern Colorado488
- The Bug Creek problem and the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition at McGuire Creek, Montana277
- Paleocene vertebrate paleontology of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico206
- Distribution and stratigraphic correlation of upper Paleocene and lower Eocene fossil mammal and plant localities of the Fort Union, Willwood, and Tatman formations, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming199
- Late Cretaceous and Paleocene mammal localities of southern Alberta158
- Ancestry and Species Definition in Paleontology: A Stratocladistic Analysis of Paleocene-Eocene Viverravidae (Mammalia, Carnivora) from Wyoming154
- Evolution of Paleocene and Eocene Phenacodontidae (Mammalia, Condylarthra)153
- The succession of Paleocene mammals in western Canada151
- Systematics and Evolution of Early Eocene Hyaenodontidae (Mammalia, Creodonta) in the Clarks Fork Basin, Wyoming149
Each of the 12,000 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. That read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 902 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 Vertebrata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Follix User:Jamez42 User:Albert kok User:Tiithunt
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Vertebrata 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Vertebrate”
- 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 itChordata through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758