Yohoia
Yohoia is an extinct genus of fossil megacheiran arthropod from the Cambrian period. The type species, Yohoia tenuis, has been found in the Burgess Shale formation of British Columbia. 711 specimens of Yohoia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 1.35% of the community. In 2015, Conway Morris et al. reported another species, Y. utahana, from the Marjum Formation, Utah.

Junnn11 · 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
- YohoiidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 4.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 509.7 Mya and 505.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
25 occurrences of Yohoia 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
25 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
1 formation
- Burgess Shale Formation · Chancellor Group25
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Yohoia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Yohoia and its relatives
CambrianWhere Yohoia and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.
Found in the same rock
137 taxa- Diraphora24 sites
- Ehmaniella burgessensis24 sites
- Hazelia24 sites
- Liangshanella24 sites
- Marrella splendens24 sites
- Selkirkia columbia24 sites
- Wiwaxia corrugata24 sites
- Pentagnostus praecurrens23 sites
- Scenella amii23 sites
- Burgessia22 sites
- Canadaspis perfecta22 sites
- Haplophrentis carinatus22 sites
- Morania22 sites
- Ottoia prolifica22 sites
- Waptia fieldensis22 sites
- Micromitra21 sites
- Sidneyia21 sites
- Laggania20 sites
- Naraoia compacta20 sites
- Pollingeria grandis20 sites
- Trilobita20 sites
- Hurdia19 sites
- Lingulella18 sites
- Nisusia18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Yohoia, 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
2 references- Paleoecology of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale24
- Paleocommunity analysis of the Burgess Shale Tulip Beds, Mount Stephen, British Columbia: Comparison with the Walcott Quarry and implications for community variation in the Burgess Shale1
Each of the 25 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Yohoia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Junnn11
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Yohoia 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, “Yohoia”
- 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 itYohoiidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.