Diagoniella
Diagoniella is a genus of sponge known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 128 specimens of Diagoniella are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.24% of the community.

Smithsonian Institution · Public Domain · 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
- ProtospongiidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Hexactinellida
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Hexactinellida
Time the record covers
At least 94 million years on record.
The record covers at least 521 Mya to 426.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 530.7 Mya to 419.62 Mya.
41 occurrences of Diagoniella on record, most of them in the Cambrian. 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
41 occurrences- Cambrian89%
- Ordovician1%
- Silurian10%
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
- Marjum Formation12
- Burgess Shale Formation · Chancellor Group9
- Wheeler Shale Formation5
- Wheeler Formation2
- Stephen Formation2
- Marjum Limestone Formation1
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The named rock units Diagoniella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Diagoniella and its relatives
CambrianWhere Diagoniella and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
383 taxa- Lingulella9 sites
- Hamptonia bowerbanki8 sites
- Protospongia8 sites
- Arthropoda7 sites
- Naraoia compacta7 sites
- Chancelloria eros6 sites
- Choia carteri6 sites
- Micromitra6 sites
- Ottoia prolifica6 sites
- Perspicaris6 sites
- Protospongia hicksi6 sites
- Valospongia6 sites
- Acrothyra5 sites
- Cambrorhytium fragilis5 sites
- Cambrorhytium major5 sites
- Choia5 sites
- Choia utahensis5 sites
- Crumillospongia5 sites
- Eiffelia globosa5 sites
- Haplophrentis carinatus5 sites
- Hazelia5 sites
- Hintzespongia bilamina5 sites
- Hyolithes5 sites
- Modocia5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Diagoniella, 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
18 references- The diverse radiodont fauna from the Marjum Formation of Utah, USA (Cambrian: Drumian)8
- Sponges of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale and Stephen Formations, British Columbia6
- Paleoecology of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale4
- Sponges of the Middle Cambrian Marjum Limestone from the House Range and Drum Mountains of Western Millard County, Utah4
- Middle Cambrian sponges from the Drum Mountains and House Range in western Utah3
- Exceptionally preserved nontrilobite arthropods and Anomalocaris from the Middle Cambrian of Utah3
- Porifera of the Middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale, from the Wheeler Amphitheater, House Range, in western Utah2
- Paleoecology of Cambrian-Ordovician marine communities of Arivechi, eastern Sonora, Mexico: paleoenvironmental considerations1
- A new Burgess Shale–type assemblage from the “thin” Stephen Formation of the southern Canadian Rockies1
- Cambrian-Ordovician sponges and spicule assemblages from northwest Argentina: new data from the siliciclastic platforms of western Gondwana1
- Palaeoecology of the Early Cambrian Sinsk biota from the Siberian Platform1
- Articulated sponges from the Lower Cambrian Hetang Formation in southern Anhui, South China: their age and implications for the early evolution of sponges1
Each of the 41 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. 6 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 Diagoniella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Smithsonian Institution
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Diagoniella 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Diagoniella”
- 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 itProtospongiidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rauff 1894