Witchellia

Witchellia

via iDigBio · CC BY-NC-SA · via iDigBio. 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
WitchelliinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Ammonoidea
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Ammonoidea
Motility
fast-movingPBDB, for Ammonoidea
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda

Time the record covers

At most 2.7 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 170.9 Mya and 168.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Middle Jurassic — about 23 of 23 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic171–171 Mya — about 1 occurrence171–171 Mya — about 1 occurrence171–171 Mya — about 1 occurrence171–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–170 Mya — about 1 occurrence170–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 1 occurrence169–169 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences169–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences171.4 Mya167.7 Mya

23 occurrences of Witchellia on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. 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

23 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

6 formations

Kialagvik — 57.32°N, 156.39°WKialagvik — 57.25°N, 156.65°WDhruma — 23.20°N, 46.33°EGuemgouma — 35.10°N, 9.71°ESnowshoe — 44.47°N, 119.53°WTölgyhát — 47.28°N, 18.10°ENewmarracarra Limestone — 28.77°S, 114.79°E

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The named rock units Witchellia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Witchellia and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Witchellia and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

79 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Witchellia, 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

7 references

Each of the 23 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 Witchellia

Source
iDigBio
Credit
via iDigBio
Licence
CC BY-NC-SA
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itWitchelliinae through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Buckman 1889