Saleniidae
Saleniidae is a family of echinoderms belonging to the order Salenioida. It was first identified by Louis Agassiz in 1838.

Uncredited · 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
- SalenioidaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Salenioida
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Salenioida
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Salenioida
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Echinoidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Echinodermata
Time the record covers
At least 149 million years on record.
The record covers at least 149.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 157.9 Mya to 0 Mya.
164 occurrences of Saleniidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
164 occurrences- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous30%
- Late Cretaceous55%
- Paleocene7%
- Eocene3%
- Oligocene4%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
45 formations
- Maastricht Formation13
- Gulpen Formation9
- Vincentown Formation · Rancocas Group7
- Maastricht Formation7
- Keasey Formation6
- Cotinguiba Formation6
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The named rock units Saleniidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 21 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 43 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Saleniidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Saleniidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,694 taxa- Salenia56 sites
- Echinogalerus15 sites
- Isocrinus15 sites
- Temnocidaris (Stereocidaris)15 sites
- Gauthieria pseudoradiata14 sites
- Salenidia maestrichtensis14 sites
- Goniasteridae13 sites
- Goniopygus13 sites
- Hemiaster13 sites
- Holaster13 sites
- Catopygus12 sites
- Tetragramma variolare12 sites
- Chomataster acules11 sites
- Cidaris11 sites
- Tylocidaris11 sites
- Discoides10 sites
- Hemipneustes striatoradiatus10 sites
- Orthopsis miliaris10 sites
- Trichaster ornatus10 sites
- Applinocrinus cretaceus9 sites
- Exogyra9 sites
- Hemiaster (Bolbaster) prunella9 sites
- Holectypus9 sites
- Metopaster9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 128 sites for Saleniidae, 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
64 references- Salenioid echinoids from the Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) of Belgium and The Netherlands22
- Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene echinoderms and the K/T boundary in the southeast Netherlands and the northeast Belgium. - part 4: Echinoids17
- Recherches géologiques sur le Crétacé inférieur de l'Estremadura (Portugal)11
- Cenomanian and Lower Turonian echinoderms from Wilmington, south-east Devon, England7
- Jura Vaudois et Neuchatelois6
- Aptian-Cenomanian echinoids from northern Sinai, Egypt5
- Exceptional crinoid occurrences and associated carbonates of the Keasey Formation (Early Oligocene) at Mist, Oregon, USA4
- The echinoderms of the Rügen White Chalk (Maastrichtian, Germany)4
- Late Cretaceous-early Tertiary echinoids from northern Spain: implications for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event4
- All Change at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary? Echinoids from the Maastrichtian and Danian of the Mangyshlak Peninsula, Kazakhstan4
- The Cenomanian-Coniacian of Sergipe Basin, Brazil4
- Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) echinoid-mollusc-coral assemblages and palaeoenvironments from a Tethyan carbonate platform succession, northern Oman Mountains3
Each of the 164 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. 52 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 content1
Picture of Saleniidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- 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 Saleniidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Saleniidae”
- 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 itSalenioida through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1838