Echinometra mathaei
Echinometra mathaei, the burrowing urchin, is a species of sea urchin in the family Echinometridae. It occurs in shallow waters in the Indo-Pacific region. The type locality is Mauritius.

Uncredited · 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
- EchinometraPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, deposit feederPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Echinoidea
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Echinodermata
Time the record covers
At least 2.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka.
3 occurrences of Echinometra mathaei on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pliocene33%
- Pleistocene67%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Echinometra mathaei 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.
Echinometra mathaei and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Echinometra mathaei and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
4 taxa- Fungia1 site
- Goniastrea parvistella1 site
- Goniopora1 site
- Pleuractis granulosa1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Echinometra mathaei, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
3 references- Contributions to the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Red Sea coast, Egypt1
- Stratigraphy, palaeoenvironments and model for the deposition of the Abdur Reef Limestone: context for an important archaeological site from the last interglacial on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea1
- The echinoid fauna from Japan and adjacent regions, Part I1
Each of the 3 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 Echinometra mathaei
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itEchinometra through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Blainville 1825)