Dickinsonia costata

Verisimilus at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5 · 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
- DickinsoniaPBDB
- Diet
- osmotrophPBDB, for Dickinsonia
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Dickinsonia
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Dickinsonia
- Environment
- inner shelf,marinePBDB, for Dickinsonia
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
25 occurrences of Dickinsonia costata on record. 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
25 occurrencesThese 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
8 formations
- Rawnsley Quartzite Formation · Wilpena Group12
- Verkhovka Formation · Ust-Pinega Group5
- Mezen' Formation2
- Blueflower Formation2
- Yorga Formation1
- Dengying Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Dickinsonia costata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
107 taxa- Aspidella10 sites
- Parvancorina minchami10 sites
- Dickinsonia tenuis9 sites
- Tribrachidium heraldicum8 sites
- Kimberella quadrata6 sites
- Yorgia waggoneri6 sites
- Cyanorus singularis4 sites
- Funisia4 sites
- Parvancorina4 sites
- Rugoconites4 sites
- Aulozoon3 sites
- Cephalonega stepanovi3 sites
- Charniodiscus3 sites
- Coronacollina acula3 sites
- Funisia dorothea3 sites
- Palaeopascichnus3 sites
- Palaeophragmodictya3 sites
- Phyllozoon hanseni3 sites
- Pteridinium simplex3 sites
- Tamga hamulifera3 sites
- Tribrachidium3 sites
- Albumares brunsae2 sites
- Andiva ivantsovi2 sites
- Animalia2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Dickinsonia costata, 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
15 references- Assemblage palaeoecology of the Ediacara biota: The unabridged edition?4
- Species of Dickinsonia Sprigg from the Ediacaran of South Australia3
- Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia2
- Supplemental Data for Ediacaran Diversification Rates2
- Paleoecological reconstruction of the Ediacaran benthic macroscopic communities of the White Sea (Russia)2
- A new Dickinsonid from the Upper Vendian of the White Sea Winter Coast (Russia, Arkhangelsk Region)2
- Early Cambrian (?) jellyfishes from the Flinders Ranges, South Australia2
- Rheotaxis in the Ediacaran epibenthic organism Parvancorina from South Australia1
- Taphonomy of the Ediacaran Podolimirus and associated dipleurozoans from the Vendian of Ukraine1
- How well do fossil assemblages of the Ediacara Biota tell time?1
- A new metazoan from the Vendian of the White Sea, Russia, with possible affinities to the ascidians1
- Small Vendian Transversely Articulated Fossils1
Each of the 25 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. 3 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 content3

Picture of Dickinsonia costata
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Verisimilus at English Wikipedia
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Dickinsonia costata · SAMA:Paleontology:P40135
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itDickinsonia through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sprigg 1947