Craniiformea

Photograph taken by Mark A. Wilson (Department of Geology, The College of Wooster) [1] . · Public Domain · 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
- BrachiopodaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At least 509 million years on record.
The record covers at least 509.7 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 515.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,494 occurrences of Craniiformea on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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
1,494 occurrences- Cambrianunder 1%
- Ordovician37%
- Silurian20%
- Devonian13%
- Carboniferous5%
- Permian11%
- Early Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous6%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene1%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene1%
- 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. More on what this infers.
Found in
408 formations
- Martinsburg Formation39
- Volkhov Formation33
- Bell Canyon Formation31
- Moscow Formation · Hamilton Group29
- Waynesville Formation27
- Road Canyon Formation25
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The named rock units Craniiformea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 384 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 242 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Craniiformea and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Craniiformea and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
2,228 taxa- Paracraniops56 sites
- Craniops37 sites
- Leptaena37 sites
- Crinoidea32 sites
- Crania31 sites
- Petrocrania29 sites
- Modiolopsis28 sites
- Nuculites28 sites
- Onniella28 sites
- Sowerbyella27 sites
- Flexicalymene26 sites
- Tentaculites26 sites
- Cornulites25 sites
- Eoplectodonta (Eoplectodonta) duplicata25 sites
- Lophospira25 sites
- Ctenodonta24 sites
- Hallopora24 sites
- Leangella scissa24 sites
- Lingula24 sites
- Platystrophia23 sites
- Pterinea22 sites
- Bryozoa21 sites
- Ostracoda21 sites
- Petrocrania modesta21 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,169 sites for Craniiformea, 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
357 references- Permian Brachiopods of West Texas, VI127
- Gradient ecology of a biotic invasion: biofacies of the type Cincinnatian Series (Upper Ordovician), Cincinnati, Ohio region, USA69
- End-Cretaceous brachiopod extinctions in the chalk of Denmark47
- Early Llandovery brachiopods of Wales40
- Biostratigraphy of the Middle and Late Ordovician cephalopods of the Upper Mississippi Valley area38
- Brachiopod macrofaunal distribution through the upper Volkhov - lower Kunda (Low Ordovician) rocks, Lynna River, St. Petersburg region32
- Paleoecology of the Martinsburg Formation at Catawba Mountain, Virginia26
- Lithology and Fauna of the Caradoc series type sections in North Estonia22
- Brachiopods and trilobites of the Sardeson Beds in the Twin Cities22
- Maastrichtian brachiopods from Ciply: palaeoecological and stratigraphical significance21
- Brachiopods from the Sappinton Formation (Devonian - Mississippian) of western Montana19
- The fossil fauna of the Ordovician in the Cincinnati Region16
Each of the 1,494 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. 345 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 Craniiformea
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Photograph taken by Mark A. Wilson (Department of Geology, The College of Wooster) [1] .
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Craniiformea 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 itBrachiopoda through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Popov et al. 1993