Halichondrites

Halichondrites, sometimes mis-spelt Halicondrites is an extinct genus of sea sponge known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 7 specimens of Halichondrites are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community.

Halichondrites

Captmondo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
HalichondritidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 363 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 152.21 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 149.2 Mya.

Cambrian — about 19 of 20 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 0 of 20 occurrencesSilurian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesDevonian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesCarboniferous — about 0 of 20 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 1 of 20 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 20 occurrences547–533 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences533–520 Mya — about 2 occurrences520–506 Mya — about 14 occurrences506–493 Mya — about 2 occurrences155–141 Mya — about 1 occurrence516 Mya152.21 Mya547 Mya141 Mya

20 occurrences of Halichondrites 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

20 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

7 formations

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WYu'anshan — 24.77°N, 102.58°EYu'anshan — 24.87°N, 102.83°EYuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 24.84°N, 102.41°ELiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°EShuijingtuo — 30.50°N, 111.16°EWeeks — 39.22°N, 113.40°WBalang — 28.42°N, 109.42°E

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The named rock units Halichondrites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Halichondrites and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Halichondrites and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

473 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Halichondrites, 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

13 references

Each of the 20 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. 1 further reference is 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 Halichondrites

Credit
Captmondo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
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 itHalichondritidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1920