Cyathaspis

Cyathaspis is the type genus of the heterostracan order Cyathaspidiformes. Fossils are found in late Silurian strata in the Cunningham Creek Formation, New Brunswick, Canada and Europe, especially in the Downton Castle Sandstone of Great Britain, Gotland, Sweden and Chelyabinsk oblast, Russia. The living animal would have looked superficially like a tadpole, albeit covered in bony plates composed of the tissue aspidine, which is unique to heterostracan armor.

Cyathaspis

Apokryltaros · 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
CyathaspididaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata

Time the record covers

At most 14 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 432.9 Mya and 419.62 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Silurian — about 6 of 6 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 0 of 6 occurrences433–432 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences432–432 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences432–431 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences431–431 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences431–431 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences431–430 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences430–430 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences430–429 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences429–429 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences429–428 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences428–428 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences428–427 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences427–427 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences427–426 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences426–426 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences426–425 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences425–425 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425–424 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences424–424 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences424–423 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences423–423 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences423–422 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences422–422 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences422–422 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences422–421 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences421–421 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences421–420 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences420–420 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences433.4 Mya419.1 Mya

6 occurrences of Cyathaspis 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

6 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

5 formations

Cunningham Creek — 45.38°N, 66.32°WRead Bay — 75.00°N, 95.00°WDownton Castle Sandstone — 52.37°N, 2.73°WDelorme — 63.53°N, 128.70°WWhitcliffe — 51.58°N, 1.87°W

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

Cyathaspis and its relatives

Silurian

Where Cyathaspis and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.

Found in the same rock

40 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Cyathaspis, 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

5 references

Each of the 6 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. 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 Cyathaspis

Credit
Apokryltaros
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cyathaspis 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 itCyathaspididae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lankester 1865