Norwoodia

Norwoodia is an extinct genus from a well-known class of fossil marine arthropods, the trilobites. It lived from 501 to 490 million years ago during the Dresbachian faunal stage of the late Cambrian Period.

Norwoodia

Skye McDavid · CC BY-SA 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
NorwoodiidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB, for Norwoodiidae
Life habit
low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
Motility
fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Norwoodiidae
Environment
marinePBDB, for Trilobita

Time the record covers

At least 184 million years on record.

The record covers at least 497 Mya to 312.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 504.5 Mya to 306 Mya.

Cambrian — about 7 of 8 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 0 of 8 occurrencesSilurian — about 0 of 8 occurrencesDevonian — about 0 of 8 occurrencesCarboniferous — about 1 of 8 occurrencesCarboniferous508–502 Mya — about 1 occurrence502–495 Mya — about 4 occurrences495–488 Mya — about 1 occurrence488–481 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences316–309 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences309–302 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences497 Mya312.8 Mya508 Mya302 Mya

8 occurrences of Norwoodia 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

8 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

5 formations

Weeks — 39.22°N, 113.34°WWeeks — 39.22°N, 113.40°WRabbitkettle — 62.70°N, 128.38°WDresbach — 44.52°N, 89.57°WFleming — 37.28°N, 94.92°WRiley — 30.81°N, 98.28°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Norwoodia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Norwoodia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Norwoodia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

103 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Norwoodia, 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

7 references

Each of the 8 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 Norwoodia

Credit
Skye McDavid
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Norwoodia 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 itNorwoodiidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1916