Volborthella

Uncredited · 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
- SalterellidaePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 516 Mya to 504.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 497 Mya.
14 occurrences of Volborthella 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
14 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
11 formations
- Harkless Formation3
- Mickwitzia Sandstone Formation2
- File Haidar Formation1
- Ringstrand Formation1
- Duolbasgaissa Formation1
- Jince Formation1
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The named rock units Volborthella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Volborthella and its relatives
CambrianWhere Volborthella and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
88 taxa- Teichichnus4 sites
- Torellella laevigata4 sites
- Agraulos ceticephalus3 sites
- Archaeocyatha3 sites
- Brachiopoda3 sites
- Cruziana3 sites
- Ctenocephalus3 sites
- Diplocraterion3 sites
- Echinodermata3 sites
- Ellipsocephalus3 sites
- Hydrocephalus carens3 sites
- Hyolitha3 sites
- Mickwitzia monilifera3 sites
- Mickwitzia pretiosa3 sites
- Mobergella3 sites
- Paleomerus3 sites
- Pelagiella3 sites
- Protolyellia3 sites
- Rusophycus3 sites
- Salterella3 sites
- Sao3 sites
- Spatangopsis3 sites
- Trilobita3 sites
- Bohemiella romingeri2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Volborthella, 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- A cnidarian affinity for Salterella and Volborthella: implications for the evolution of shells3
- Predation by early Cambrian trilobites on infaunal worms - evidence from the Swedish Mickwitzia Sandstone3
- Subspecies kluges: a pointless taxonomic database to create species opinions for subspecies that then will be over-ruled and allow subspecies occurrences to be recognized as the subspecies rather than the parent species2
- Redescription of Holmia inusitata (Trilobita) from the Lower Cambrian of Scandinavia1
- A biota of Ediacaran aspect from lower Cambrian strata on the Digermul Peninsula, Arctic Norway1
- Chlupáč et al., 19981
- Molluscan radula from earliest Cambrian1
- The enigmatic Cambrian fossil Volborthella and its occurrence in California1
- The Lower Cambrian Holmia fauna at Tomten in Norway1
Each of the 14 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 Volborthella
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Volborthella 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 itSalterellidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schmidt 1888