Zoroasteridae

The Zoroasteridae are one of three families of Asteroidea in the order Forcipulatida. It contains seven living genera and one extinct genus.

Zoroasteridae

NOAA Okeanos Explorer · Public Domain · 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
ForcipulatidaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Forcipulatida
Life habit
low-level epifaunal, solitaryPBDB, for Forcipulatida
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Forcipulatida
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
Environment
marine,brackishPBDB, for Forcipulatida

Time the record covers

At least 83 million years on record.

The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 33.9 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 17 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 17 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 17 occurrencesEocene — about 16 of 17 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 17 occurrences128–124 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences124–121 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences58–54 Mya — about 1 occurrence54–51 Mya — about 3 occurrences51–48 Mya — about 3 occurrences48–45 Mya — about 2 occurrences45–42 Mya — about 2 occurrences42–38 Mya — about 2 occurrences38–35 Mya — about 2 occurrences35–32 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences121.4 Mya37.71 Mya128 Mya32 Mya

17 occurrences of Zoroasteridae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

17 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

3 formations

La Meseta — 64.24°S, 56.67°WLa Meseta — 64.26°S, 56.68°WLa Meseta — 64.23°S, 56.61°WLa Meseta — 64.26°S, 56.63°WTaboulouart — 30.78°N, 8.53°WRuatangata — 35.79°S, 174.48°E

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

Zoroasteridae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Zoroasteridae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

14 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Zoroasteridae, 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

Each of the 17 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 Zoroasteridae

Credit
NOAA Okeanos Explorer
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Zoroasteridae 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

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 itForcipulatida through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

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