Opabinia

Opabinia regalis is an extinct stem group marine arthropod found in the Lagerstätte of the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Opabinia was a soft-bodied animal, measuring up to 7 cm in body length, and had a segmented trunk with flaps along its sides and a fan-shaped tail. The head showed unusual features: 5 eyes, a mouth under the head and facing backwards, and a clawed proboscis that most likely passed food to its mouth. Opabinia lived on the seafloor, using the proboscis to seek out small, soft food. Fewer than twenty good specimens have been described; 3 specimens of Opabinia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they constitute less than 0.1% of the community.

Opabinia

Han Zeng · CC0 · 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
OpabiniidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
nektonicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 35 million years on record.

The record covers at least 505.3 Mya to 469.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 509.7 Mya to 458.2 Mya.

Cambrian — about 2 of 3 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 1 of 3 occurrencesOrdovician511–509 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences509–507 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences507–505 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences505–504 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences470–468 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences468–466 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences466–464 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences464–463 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences463–461 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences461–459 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences459–457 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences505.3 Mya469.4 Mya511 Mya457 Mya

3 occurrences of Opabinia 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

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

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WGilwern Volcanic — 52.24°N, 3.38°W

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

Opabinia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Opabinia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

105 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Opabinia, 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 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Opabinia

Credit
Han Zeng
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itOpabiniidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1912