Ventogyrus
Ventogyrus is an Ediacaran fossil found in the White Sea-Arkhangelsk region of Russia. It was first discovered in the Teska member of the Ust'-Pinega formation, in a thick lens of sandstone, originally sand dumped by storm waves that cut a deep channel through the shallow sea bottom where the organisms lived. Many individuals were preserved on top of each other, often torn or in distorted positions. As a result, it was originally thought to have had a "boat shaped" form and to have lived anchored in the sea floor. However, a nearby site discovered later by Mikhail Fedonkin yielded separate specimens which were beautifully preserved in an upright position and showed the internal anatomy.

Retallack · CC BY-SA 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
- AnimaliaPBDB
- Diet
- osmotrophPBDB
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Ventogyrus on record. 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
3 occurrencesThese 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
- Verkhovka Formation · Ust-Pinega Group3
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The named rock units Ventogyrus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
19 taxa- Aspidella2 sites
- Albumares brunsae1 site
- Anfesta1 site
- Archangelia valdaica1 site
- Ausia1 site
- Ausia fenestrata1 site
- Bomakellia kelleri1 site
- Calyptrina1 site
- Cephalonega stepanovi1 site
- Charniodiscus1 site
- Ediacaria1 site
- Palaeopascichnus1 site
- Palaeoplatoda1 site
- Paliella1 site
- Rangea1 site
- Swartpuntia1 site
- Swartpuntia germsi1 site
- Tribrachidium1 site
- Vendoconularia triradiata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Ventogyrus, 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
3 references- Patterns of distribution in the Ediacaran biotas: facies versus biogeography and evolution1
- Conulariid-like fossil from the Vendian of Russia: A metazoan clade across the Proterozoic/Palaeozoic boundary1
- A new representative of the Petalonamae from the Upper Vendian of the Arkhangelsk Region1
Each of the 3 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. 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 Ventogyrus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Retallack
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ventogyrus 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, “Ventogyrus”
- 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 itAnimalia through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ivantsov and Grazhdankin 1997