Thylacocephala

Thylacocephala is an extinct group of mandibulate arthropods, that are generally regarded as a kind of crustacean, though their exact position within this group is uncertain. As a class they have a short research history, having been erected in the early 1980s.

Thylacocephala

Carolin Haug, Derek E G Briggs, Donald G Mikulic, Joanne Kluessendorf, and Joachim T Haug · CC BY 4.0 · 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
EucrustaceaPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 371 million years on record.

The record covers at least 457.2 Mya to 85.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 459.7 Mya to 83.6 Mya.

Ordovician — about 2 of 61 occurrencesSilurian — about 4 of 61 occurrencesDevonian — about 3 of 61 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 8 of 61 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 61 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 19 of 61 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 8 of 61 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 4 of 61 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 1 of 61 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 4 of 61 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 3 of 61 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 61 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 4 of 61 occurrences467–454 Mya — about 2 occurrences441–428 Mya — about 4 occurrences389–376 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences376–363 Mya — about 2 occurrences363–350 Mya — about 1 occurrence311–298 Mya — about 7 occurrences259–246 Mya — about 19 occurrences246–233 Mya — about 10 occurrences219–206 Mya — about 2 occurrences206–193 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences193–180 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences167–154 Mya — about 4 occurrences154–141 Mya — about 3 occurrences115–102 Mya — about 1 occurrence102–89 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences89–76 Mya — about 3 occurrences457.2 Mya85.7 Mya467 Mya76 Mya

61 occurrences of Thylacocephala on record, most of them in the Early Triassic. 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

61 occurrences

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

20 formations

Nanlinghu — 31.62°N, 117.82°EBuchenstein — 45.94°N, 9.39°EBuchenstein — 46.45°N, 12.09°EOsawa — 38.81°N, 141.55°EOsawa — 38.71°N, 141.54°ESwope — 41.07°N, 96.08°WSwope — 41.47°N, 96.01°WSwope — 41.35°N, 95.88°WBrandon Bridge — 43.03°N, 88.21°WCarbondale — 41.34°N, 88.39°WEl Doctor — 20.75°N, 99.34°WSolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°EReingrabener Schiefer — 47.88°N, 15.07°ELetna — 49.97°N, 14.06°ELetna — 49.94°N, 13.96°ENew Albany Shale — 38.48°N, 85.75°WDennis — 41.14°N, 95.98°WLombardische Kieselkalk — 46.00°N, 9.08°EDolomia di Forni — 46.38°N, 12.86°ELiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°EStrelovec — 46.33°N, 14.59°EZorzino Limestone — 45.78°N, 9.82°EGogo — 18.58°S, 125.90°EPatrick Burn — 55.61°N, 3.99°WWoodruff — 40.69°N, 116.13°W

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The named rock units Thylacocephala has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Thylacocephala and its relatives

Early Triassic

Where Thylacocephala and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.

Found in the same rock

414 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 38 sites for Thylacocephala, 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

27 references

Each of the 61 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. 15 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 Thylacocephala

Credit
Carolin Haug, Derek E G Briggs, Donald G Mikulic, Joanne Kluessendorf, and Joachim T Haug
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thylacocephala 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 itEucrustacea through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pinna et al. 1982