Thaumactena ensis

Fang Zhang (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- ThaumactenaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ctenophora
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Ctenophora
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ctenophora
Time the record covers
At most 6.5 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 521 Mya and 514.5 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Thaumactena ensis 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
1 occurrences- Cambrian100%
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 Thaumactena ensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Thaumactena ensis and its relatives
CambrianWhere Thaumactena ensis and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
5 taxa- Batofasciculus ramificans1 site
- Gemmactena actinala1 site
- Iotuba chengjiangensis1 site
- Maotianoascus octonarius1 site
- Trigoides aclis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Thaumactena ensis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Thaumactena ensis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Fang Zhang (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Thaumactena ensis 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itThaumactena through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ou et al. 2015