Pirania

Pirania is an extinct genus of sea sponge known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale and the Ordovician Fezouata formation. It is named after Mount St. Piran, a mountain situated in the Bow River Valley in Banff National Park, Alberta. It was first described in 1920 by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 198 specimens of Pirania are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.38% of the community.

Pirania

Smithsonian Institution · No restrictions · 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
PiraniidaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB
Vision
blindPBDB, for Porifera

Time the record covers

At least 47 million years on record.

The record covers at least 505.3 Mya to 458.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 509.7 Mya to 452.8 Mya.

Cambrian — about 17 of 22 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 5 of 22 occurrencesOrdovician511–509 Mya — about 2 occurrences509–507 Mya — about 6 occurrences507–505 Mya — about 5 occurrences505–503 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences503–501 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences501–499 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences499–497 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences497–495 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences487–485 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences485–483 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences483–481 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences481–479 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences479–477 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences477–475 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences475–473 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences473–471 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences471–469 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences469–467 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences462–460 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences460–458 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences458–456 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences456–454 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences454–452 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences505.3 Mya458.2 Mya511 Mya452 Mya

22 occurrences of Pirania 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

22 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

Burgess Shale — 51.44°N, 116.47°WBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WBurgess Shale — 51.33°N, 116.35°WBurgess Shale — 51.03°N, 115.83°WFezouata — 30.50°N, 5.85°WFezouata — 30.52°N, 5.93°WLlanfawr Mudstone — 52.23°N, 3.37°WDuchesnay — 51.10°N, 115.95°WWeeks — 39.22°N, 113.40°W

Loading coastlines…

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

Pirania and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Pirania and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

257 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Pirania, 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

11 references

Each of the 22 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 Pirania

Credit
Smithsonian Institution
Licence
No restrictions
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Pirania 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 itPiraniidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Walcott 1920