Vetulicola

Vetulicola is an extinct genus of marine animal discovered from the Cambrian of China. It is the eponymous member of the enigmatic taxon Vetulicolia, which is of uncertain affinities but may belong to the deuterostomes. The name was derived from Vetulicola cuneata, the first species described by Hou Xian-guang in 1987 from the Lower Cambrian Chiungchussu Formation in Chengjiang, China.

Vetulicola

Masahiro miyasaka · 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
VetulicolidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Vision
blindPBDB, for Vetulicolida

Time the record covers

At most 8.9 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 521 Mya and 512.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Cambrian — about 29 of 29 occurrencesCambrian521–521 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences521–521 Mya — about 1 occurrence521–520 Mya — about 1 occurrence520–520 Mya — about 1 occurrence520–520 Mya — about 1 occurrence520–519 Mya — about 1 occurrence519–519 Mya — about 1 occurrence519–519 Mya — about 1 occurrence519–518 Mya — about 1 occurrence518–518 Mya — about 1 occurrence518–518 Mya — about 1 occurrence518–517 Mya — about 1 occurrence517–517 Mya — about 1 occurrence517–517 Mya — about 1 occurrence517–516 Mya — about 1 occurrence516–516 Mya — about 1 occurrence516–516 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences516–515 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences515–515 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences515–515 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences515–514 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences514–514 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences514–514 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences514–513 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences513–513 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences513–513 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences513–512 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences512–512 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences521.5 Mya511.6 Mya

29 occurrences of Vetulicola 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

29 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

4 formations

Yuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 24.84°N, 102.41°EYuanshan — 25.40°N, 103.38°EYuanshan — 25.72°N, 103.99°EYuanshan — 24.00°N, 102.00°EWulongqing — 24.95°N, 102.80°EWulongqing — 25.68°N, 102.17°EYu'anshan — 25.33°N, 103.50°EYu'anshan — 24.77°N, 102.58°EShipai — 30.79°N, 111.17°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Vetulicola has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Vetulicola and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Vetulicola and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

273 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Vetulicola, 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

9 references

Each of the 29 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 content2

Picture of Vetulicola

Credit
Masahiro miyasaka
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

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

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 itVetulicolidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hou 1987