Kimberella quadrata

Uncredited · 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
- KimberellaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Kimberella
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Kimberella
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Kimberella
- Environment
- inner shelf,marinePBDB, for Kimberella
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.
15 occurrences of Kimberella quadrata 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
15 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
- Verkhovka Formation · Ust-Pinega Group6
- Rawnsley Quartzite Formation · Wilpena Group2
- Yorga Formation2
- Ust-Pinega Formation1
- Zimnegory Formation · Valdai Group1
- Contra Fogo Sandstone Formation1
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The named rock units Kimberella quadrata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
63 taxa- Tribrachidium heraldicum10 sites
- Cyanorus singularis7 sites
- Yorgia waggoneri7 sites
- Dickinsonia costata6 sites
- Dickinsonia tenuis6 sites
- Aspidella5 sites
- Cephalonega stepanovi5 sites
- Parvancorina minchami5 sites
- Armillifera4 sites
- Lossinia4 sites
- Palaeophragmodictya4 sites
- Tamga hamulifera4 sites
- Temnoxa molliuscula4 sites
- Parvancorina sagitta3 sites
- Solza margarita3 sites
- Vendia rachiata3 sites
- Andiva ivantsovi2 sites
- Anfesta stankovskii2 sites
- Archaeaspis fedonkini2 sites
- Armillifera parva2 sites
- Charniodiscus2 sites
- Palaeopascichnus2 sites
- Paravendia janae2 sites
- Rangea schneiderhoehni2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Kimberella quadrata, 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
10 references- Paleoecological reconstruction of the Ediacaran benthic macroscopic communities of the White Sea (Russia)4
- Supplemental Data for Ediacaran Diversification Rates2
- Patterns of evolution of the Ediacaran soft-bodied biota2
- Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia1
- Kimberella from the terminal Ediacaran Shibantan limestone, South China: The persistence of bilaterians during the White Sea-Nama transition1
- How diverse were early animal communities? An example from Ediacara Conservation Park, Flinders Ranges, South Australia1
- First Ediacaran fauna occurrence in northeastern Brazil (Jaibaras Basin, ?Ediacaran-Cambrian): Preliminary results and regional correlation1
- A new metazoan from the Vendian of the White Sea, Russia, with possible affinities to the ascidians1
- Small Vendian Transversely Articulated Fossils1
- New proarticulata from the Vendian of the Arkhangel'sk region1
Each of the 15 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 Kimberella quadrata
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Kimberella quadrata 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itKimberella through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Glaessner and Wade 1966)