Palaeoconchus
Palaeoconchus is a genus of microconchid tubeworms. Their tubes have pseudopunctae penetrating the tube wall. Tubes lumen is smooth. Palaeoconchus occurs in the Late Ordovician of Baltica and Avalonia. In the Devonian it had a global distribution.

Olev Vinn · 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
- PalaeoconchidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Tentaculitida
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Tentaculitida
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Tentaculitida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Tentaculita
Time the record covers
At most 29 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 410.62 Mya and 382.31 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Palaeoconchus on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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
2 occurrences- Devonian100%
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
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The named rock units Palaeoconchus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Palaeoconchus and its relatives
DevonianWhere Palaeoconchus and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
62 taxa- Anticalyptraea1 site
- Ascodictyon1 site
- Atactotoechus1 site
- Atrypida1 site
- Aulopora1 site
- Auloporidae1 site
- Belodella1 site
- Blothrophyllum1 site
- Bryozoa indet.1 site
- Calceola sandalina1 site
- Clionolithes1 site
- Conodonta indet.1 site
- Cornulites1 site
- Cornulitidae1 site
- Corynotrypa1 site
- Crinoidea1 site
- Cyclostomata indet.1 site
- Cystiphyllidae1 site
- Cystoporata1 site
- Cystoporida1 site
- Deliella1 site
- Devonogypa1 site
- Drotops megalomanicus1 site
- Eostenopora1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Palaeoconchus, 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- Middle Devonian brachiopod-hosted sclerobiont assemblage from the northern shelf of Gondwana (Mader Basin, Morocco): Diversity, colonization patterns and relation to coeval palaeocommunities1
- New Devonian microconchids (Tentaculita) from the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland1
Each of the 2 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 content1
Picture of Palaeoconchus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Olev Vinn
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itPalaeoconchidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vinn 2006