Diplograptus
Diplograptus was a Ordovician genus of graptolites.

C.D. Walcott · 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
- DiplograptidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Life habit
- planktonicPBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Motility
- passively mobilePBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Graptolithina
Time the record covers
At least 37 million years on record.
The record covers at least 470.3 Mya to 432.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 486.85 Mya to 419.62 Mya.
164 occurrences of Diplograptus on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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
164 occurrences- Ordovician87%
- Silurian13%
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
62 formations
- Leslie Formation · Aorere Group16
- Vinini Formation11
- Wufeng Formation9
- Peel Formation · Golden Bay Group9
- Road River Formation5
- Road River Formation4
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Diplograptus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 38 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 27 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Diplograptus and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Diplograptus and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
980 taxa- Climacograptus71 sites
- Dicellograptus42 sites
- Orthograptus28 sites
- Amplexograptus27 sites
- Glyptograptus26 sites
- Didymograptus17 sites
- Dicranograptus14 sites
- Glossograptus14 sites
- Cryptograptus schaeferi13 sites
- Hustedograptus teretiusculus12 sites
- Pseudoclimacograptus12 sites
- Glossograptus hincksii11 sites
- Lasiograptus11 sites
- Lonchodomas11 sites
- Ampyx10 sites
- Nicholsonograptus fasciculatus10 sites
- Remopleurides10 sites
- Reteograptus9 sites
- Conularia8 sites
- Ctenodonta8 sites
- Dicellograptus sextans8 sites
- Pseudoclimacograptus scharenbergi8 sites
- Cryptolithus7 sites
- Dichograptidae7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 128 sites for Diplograptus, 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
71 references- Graptolites of Cobb River-Mount Arthur Area, North-West Nelson, New Zealand25
- Uppermost Ordovician (upper Katian-Hirnantian) graptolites of north-central Nevada, USA14
- Ordovician Sedimentary Basin and Paleobiotas of the Gorny Altai7
- Om de Chasmopskalken och Trinicleusskiffern motsvarande bildningarne I Skane7
- Palaeozoic geology of the Lake Simcoe Area, Ontario5
- Geology and mineral deposits of southeastern Alaska5
- Correlation of the Silurian rocks of China4
- Stratigraphic Summary of the Southwestern Region of China4
- Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian biostratigraphy of east-central Alaska4
- Swedish Late Ordovician marine benthic assemblages and their bearing on brachiopod biogeography3
- Geologic map of the Rhyolite Ridge quadrangle, Esmeralda County, Nevada3
- Ordovician formations and faunas, southern Mackenzie Mountains3
Each of the 164 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. 59 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 Diplograptus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- C.D. Walcott
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Diplograptus 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
- 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 itDiplograptidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.