Kinorhyncha

Kinorhyncha is a phylum of small marine invertebrates that are widespread in mud or sand at all depths as part of the meiobenthos. They are commonly called mud dragons. Modern species are 1 mm (0.039 in) or less, but Cambrian forms could reach 4 cm (1.6 in).

Kinorhyncha

Hiroshi Yamasaki & Shinta Fujimoto · CC BY 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
ScalidophoraPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 45 million years on record.

The record covers at least 514.5 Mya to 469.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 521 Mya to 458.2 Mya.

Cambrian — about 1 of 2 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 1 of 2 occurrencesOrdovician522–520 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences520–518 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences518–516 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences516–514 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences470–468 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences468–466 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences466–463 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences463–461 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences461–459 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences459–457 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences514.5 Mya469.4 Mya522 Mya457 Mya

2 occurrences of Kinorhyncha on record, most of them in the Cambrian. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

2 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

2 formations

Shuijingtuo — 30.50°N, 111.16°EGilwern Volcanic — 52.24°N, 3.38°W

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

Kinorhyncha and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Kinorhyncha and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

99 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Kinorhyncha, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Kinorhyncha

Credit
Hiroshi Yamasaki & Shinta Fujimoto
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Kinorhyncha was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itScalidophora through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Reinhard 1885