Rafinesquina
Rafinesquina is an extinct genus of large brachiopod that existed from the Darriwilian to the Ludlow epoch.

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- RafinesquininaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Strophomenata
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At least 44 million years on record.
The record covers at least 477.1 Mya to 432.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 486.85 Mya to 422.7 Mya.
1,521 occurrences of Rafinesquina on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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
1,521 occurrences- Ordovician99%
- Silurian1%
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
169 formations
- Martinsburg Formation141
- Waynesville Formation · Richmondian Group100
- Lexington Limestone Formation94
- Kope Formation · Cincinnati Group83
- Verulam Formation · Simcoe Group70
- Fairview Formation · Maysvillian Group63
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The named rock units Rafinesquina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 145 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 74 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Rafinesquina and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Rafinesquina and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
1,638 taxa- Zygospira70 sites
- Platystrophia69 sites
- Strophomena65 sites
- Anazyga recurvirostra53 sites
- Hebertella53 sites
- Hallopora51 sites
- Rhynchotrema49 sites
- Flexicalymene41 sites
- Paucicrura rogata39 sites
- Prasopora39 sites
- Ambonychia38 sites
- Ctenodonta38 sites
- Isotelus38 sites
- Dalmanella37 sites
- Sowerbyella37 sites
- Isotelus gigas36 sites
- Zygospira modesta35 sites
- Homotrypa33 sites
- Modiolopsis33 sites
- Lophospira32 sites
- Conularia31 sites
- Escharopora31 sites
- Eridotrypa30 sites
- Petrocrania30 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,332 sites for Rafinesquina, and this reads 240 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
137 references- Gradient ecology of a biotic invasion: biofacies of the type Cincinnatian Series (Upper Ordovician), Cincinnati, Ohio region, USA500
- Community gradients in the Martinsburg Fm. (Ord.) southwestern Virginia82
- Palaeozoic geology of the Lake Simcoe Area, Ontario78
- Ecological restructuring after extinction: the Late Ordovician (Mohawkian) of the eastern United States69
- GIS-based biogeography of Cincinnatian (Upper Ordovician) brachiopods with special reference to Hebertella56
- Paleoecology of the Martinsburg Formation at Catawba Mountain, Virginia50
- Ecosystem structure and stability: middle Upper Ordovician of central Kentucky, USA42
- Analysis of sample-level properties along a paleoenvironmental gradient: the behavior of evenness as a function of sample size41
- Zonation of the Middle and Upper Ordovician strata in northwestern Georgia39
- Ordovician Brachiopoda from the Shelve District, Shropshire32
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University31
- Biofacies Replacement in a Sequence Stratigraphic Framework: Middle and Upper Ordovician of the Nashville Dome, Tennessee, USA29
Each of the 1,521 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. 125 further references are not listed. 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 content3
Picture of Rafinesquina
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James St. John
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Rafinesquina sp. · cmc:IP98743
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itRafinesquininae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hall and Clarke 1892