Tetragraptus
Tetragraptus is an extinct genus of graptolites from the Ordovician period.

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
- PhyllograptidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Life habit
- planktonicPBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Motility
- passively mobilePBDB, for Graptoloidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Graptolithina
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 477.1 Mya to 457.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 488.9 Mya to 443.1 Mya.
236 occurrences of Tetragraptus 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
236 occurrences- Cambrianunder 1%
- Ordovician100%
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
57 formations
- Aorangi Mine Formation29
- Rollston Range Formation · Seventy Mile Range Group24
- Lower Road River Formation · Road River Group18
- Leetse Formation16
- Ningguo Formation12
- Acoite Formation · Santa Victoria Group12
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The named rock units Tetragraptus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 33 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tetragraptus and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Tetragraptus and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
651 taxa- Didymograptus82 sites
- Phyllograptus46 sites
- Glyptograptus23 sites
- Dichograptus19 sites
- Isograptus18 sites
- Clonograptus17 sites
- Paratetragraptus approximatus17 sites
- Paroistodus17 sites
- Paroistodus proteus15 sites
- Didymograptus extensus14 sites
- Oelandodus14 sites
- Pseudophyllograptus angustifolius14 sites
- Azygograptus12 sites
- Fucoides serra12 sites
- Glossograptus12 sites
- Tshallograptus fruticosus12 sites
- Amplexograptus11 sites
- Baltograptus deflexus11 sites
- Expansograptus11 sites
- Geragnostus11 sites
- Pseudotrigonograptus11 sites
- Sinorthis11 sites
- Climacograptus10 sites
- Didymograptellus nitidus10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 176 sites for Tetragraptus, 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
66 references- Ordovician Geology and Graptolite faunas of the Aorangi Mine area, North-west Nelson, New Zealand29
- Early Ordovician faunas from the Mount Windsor Subrovince, northeastern Queensland24
- The sequence and correlation of Early Ordovician (Arenig) graptolite faunas in the Richardson Trough and Misty Creek Embayment, Yukon Territory and District of Mackenzie, Canada16
- The Hunneberg Stage (Ordovician) in the area east of St. Petersburg, north-western Russia14
- Asociaciones de graptolitos del Arenig de la localidad tipo de la Formacion La Alumbrera, Sistema de Famatina, Argentina12
- Stratigraphic Summary of the Southwestern Region of China8
- Regional stratigraphic table of Eastern China, Zhejiang Province8
- Ordovician Sedimentary Basin and Paleobiotas of the Gorny Altai7
- Lower Palaeozoic stratigraphy and palaeontology, Karadere–Zirze area, Pontus Mountains, northern Turkey7
- La fauna de graptolitos de la Formación Acoite, en el borde occidental de la Cordillera Oriental Argentina. Análisis bioestratigráfico7
- Ordovician and Silurian graptolite succession in the Trail Creek area, central Idaho-a graptolite zone reference section6
- The revision of structural - facial zonation and stratigraphy of the lower part of the Ordovician in the south - east Baltic area5
Each of the 236 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. 54 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 Tetragraptus
- 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 Tetragraptus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itPhyllograptidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Salter 1863