Ottoia

Ottoia

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
OttoidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
infaunalPBDB
Motility
facultatively mobilePBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Priapulida

Time the record covers

At least 32 million years on record.

The record covers at least 509.7 Mya to 477.1 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 515.3 Mya to 471.3 Mya.

Cambrian — about 38 of 39 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 1 of 39 occurrencesOrdovician516–515 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences515–513 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences513–512 Mya — about 1 occurrence512–510 Mya — about 1 occurrence510–509 Mya — about 7 occurrences509–507 Mya — about 9 occurrences507–506 Mya — about 10 occurrences506–504 Mya — about 3 occurrences504–502 Mya — about 1 occurrence502–501 Mya — about 1 occurrence501–499 Mya — about 2 occurrences499–498 Mya — about 2 occurrences498–496 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences478–477 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences477–475 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences475–473 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences473–472 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences472–470 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences509.7 Mya477.1 Mya516.2 Mya470.4 Mya

39 occurrences of Ottoia 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

39 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

11 formations

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.03°N, 115.83°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WMarjum — 39.00°N, 113.00°WMarjum — 39.27°N, 113.31°WDuchesnay — 51.10°N, 115.95°WDuchesnay — 50.63°N, 115.60°WKinzers — 40.04°N, 76.31°WKinzers — 40.09°N, 76.35°WKaili — 27.00°N, 107.00°EPioche Shale — 37.92°N, 114.61°WPioche — 37.80°N, 114.57°WMadaoyu — 28.78°N, 109.84°EWeeks — 39.22°N, 113.40°WParker — 44.73°N, 73.15°WPika — 53.20°N, 119.15°W

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

Ottoia and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Ottoia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

406 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Ottoia, 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

12 references

Each of the 39 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 Ottoia

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Ottoia 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 itOttoidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1911