Furcaster

Furcaster is an extinct genus of brittle stars. It lived from the Silurian to Devonian periods. Furcaster palaeozoicus is known from the Hunsrück Slate lagerstätte.

Furcaster

MNHN · CC BY 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
FurcasteridaePBDB
Diet
detritivore, suspension feederPBDB, for Ophiuroidea
Life habit
low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Ophiuroidea
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Ophiuroidea
Vision
blindPBDB, for Ophiuroidea
Environment
marinePBDB, for Ophiuroidea

Time the record covers

At least 102 million years on record.

The record covers at least 432.9 Mya to 330.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 438.6 Mya to 323.4 Mya.

Silurian — about 4 of 42 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 35 of 42 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 3 of 42 occurrencesCarboniferous441–437 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences437–433 Mya — about 1 occurrence433–429 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences429–425 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences425–421 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences421–417 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences417–413 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences413–409 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences409–405 Mya — about 2 occurrences405–401 Mya — about 2 occurrences401–397 Mya — about 1 occurrence397–393 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences393–389 Mya — about 2 occurrences389–385 Mya — about 1 occurrence385–381 Mya — about 12 occurrences381–377 Mya — about 5 occurrences377–373 Mya — about 3 occurrences373–369 Mya — about 1 occurrence369–365 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences365–361 Mya — about 2 occurrences361–357 Mya — about 1 occurrence333–329 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences329–325 Mya — about 2 occurrences325–321 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences432.9 Mya330.3 Mya441 Mya321 Mya

42 occurrences of Furcaster on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

42 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

10 formations

Kowala — 50.83°N, 20.37°EKowala — 50.88°N, 20.57°EKowala — 50.85°N, 20.82°EKowala — 50.82°N, 20.58°EKowala — 50.80°N, 20.47°EHunsrück Slate — 49.83°N, 7.37°EBig Clifty — 38.24°N, 86.49°WSappington — 46.01°N, 112.54°WVelbert — 51.33°N, 7.05°ETalacasto — 30.50°S, 68.50°WGrzegorzowice — 50.88°N, 21.03°ELower Leintwardine — 52.37°N, 2.88°WReservoir — 55.80°N, 3.33°WWocklum — 51.34°N, 7.02°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Furcaster has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Furcaster and its relatives

Devonian

Where Furcaster and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

281 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Furcaster, 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

9 references

Each of the 42 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 Furcaster

Credit
MNHN
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Furcaster 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 itFurcasteridae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stürtz 1886