Orygmaspis

Orygmaspis is a genus of asaphid trilobite with an inverted egg-shaped outline, a wide headshield, small eyes, long genal spines, 12 spined thorax segments and a small, short tailshield, with four pairs of spines. It lived during the Late Cambrian in what are today Canada and the United States.

Orygmaspis

Dwergenpaartje · CC BY-SA 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
ParabolinoididaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Trilobita
Life habit
low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
Motility
fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Parabolinoididae
Environment
marinePBDB, for Trilobita

Time the record covers

At most 11 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 497 Mya and 486.85 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Cambrian — about 55 of 55 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 0 of 55 occurrences497–497 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences497–496 Mya — about 1 occurrence496–496 Mya — about 1 occurrence496–496 Mya — about 1 occurrence496–495 Mya — about 1 occurrence495–495 Mya — about 1 occurrence495–495 Mya — about 1 occurrence495–494 Mya — about 1 occurrence494–494 Mya — about 1 occurrence494–493 Mya — about 2 occurrences493–493 Mya — about 3 occurrences493–493 Mya — about 3 occurrences493–492 Mya — about 3 occurrences492–492 Mya — about 3 occurrences492–492 Mya — about 3 occurrences492–491 Mya — about 3 occurrences491–491 Mya — about 3 occurrences491–490 Mya — about 3 occurrences490–490 Mya — about 3 occurrences490–490 Mya — about 3 occurrences490–489 Mya — about 3 occurrences489–489 Mya — about 3 occurrences489–489 Mya — about 2 occurrences489–488 Mya — about 1 occurrence488–488 Mya — about 1 occurrence488–487 Mya — about 1 occurrence487–487 Mya — about 1 occurrence487–487 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences497.5 Mya486.4 Mya

55 occurrences of Orygmaspis 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

55 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

7 formations

Deadwood — 44.30°N, 103.65°WDeadwood — 44.38°N, 103.68°WDeadwood — 44.08°N, 103.33°WDeadwood — 44.28°N, 103.78°WDeadwood — 44.32°N, 103.63°WDeadwood — 44.25°N, 103.45°WDeadwood — 44.33°N, 103.90°WDavis — 37.93°N, 90.73°WDavis — 37.77°N, 90.52°WHoney Creek Limestone — 34.39°N, 97.12°WHoney Creek Limestone — 34.82°N, 98.41°WBison Creek — 51.50°N, 116.20°WSnowy Range — 47.15°N, 110.22°WSnowy Range — 46.87°N, 111.00°WOpen Door — 43.28°N, 109.83°WRabbitkettle — 64.59°N, 130.00°W

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The named rock units Orygmaspis 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.

Orygmaspis and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Orygmaspis and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

44 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Orygmaspis, 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

9 references

Each of the 55 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 Orygmaspis

Credit
Dwergenpaartje
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Orygmaspis 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 itParabolinoididae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Resser 1937