Meteoraspis borealis

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- MeteoraspisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Trilobita
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Tricrepicephalidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 7.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 504.5 Mya and 497 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Meteoraspis borealis 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
3 occurrences- Cambrian100%
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
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The named rock units Meteoraspis borealis 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.
Meteoraspis borealis and its relatives
CambrianWhere Meteoraspis borealis and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
19 taxa- Acrotreta schucherti2 sites
- Lingulella holyokensis2 sites
- Amquia1 site
- Blountia1 site
- Blountia mimula1 site
- Blountia nasuta1 site
- Catillicephala1 site
- Cedaria1 site
- Coosella intermediens1 site
- Crepicephalus1 site
- Dendrograptus kindlei1 site
- Hemirhodon1 site
- Holcacephalus1 site
- Kingstonia1 site
- Kingstonia gaspensis1 site
- Kingstonia vagrans1 site
- Norwoodia katherina1 site
- Terranovella obscura1 site
- Tricrepicephalus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Meteoraspis borealis, 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
2 references- Middle and upper Cambrian Faunas from western Newfoundland2
- Early Upper Cambrian Trilobites from Western Gaspé1
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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Meteoraspis borealis
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Meteoraspis borealis 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMeteoraspis through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lochman 1938