Tetragraptus
Searched as Tetragraptus bigsbyi diverrens. The Paleobiology Database treats Tetragraptus as the accepted name.
Tetragraptus is an extinct genus of graptolites from the Ordovician period.

Uncredited · 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
- 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 most 7.3 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 482.9 Mya and 475.6 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence 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
1 occurrences- 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
1 formation
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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.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Tetragraptus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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