Abra aequalis
Abra aequalis, also known as the Atlantic abra, is a species of marine bivalve found in the west Atlantic Ocean.

(c) Jacob Weston, some rights reserved (CC BY) · CC BY 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
- AbraPBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB, for Abra
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Abra
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Abra
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
72 occurrences of Abra aequalis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
72 occurrences- Pliocene28%
- Pleistocene56%
- Holocene17%
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
18 formations
- Morne l'Enfer Formation11
- James City Formation7
- Waccamaw Formation6
- Horry Clay Formation5
- Caloosahatchee Formation3
- Bermont Formation3
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The named rock units Abra aequalis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Abra aequalis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Abra aequalis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,363 taxa- Nucula (Nucula) proxima28 sites
- Mulinia lateralis26 sites
- Crassinella lunulata24 sites
- Nuculana acuta24 sites
- Anomia simplex23 sites
- Parvilucina multistriata23 sites
- Crepidula plana21 sites
- Plicatula gibbosa21 sites
- Crepidula fornicata20 sites
- Neverita duplicatus20 sites
- Anadara16 sites
- Astyris lunata16 sites
- Olivella mutica16 sites
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa15 sites
- Cerithium15 sites
- Diodora15 sites
- Glycymeris americana15 sites
- Mercenaria campechiensis15 sites
- Acteocina canaliculata14 sites
- Angulus texanus14 sites
- Busycon14 sites
- Carolinapecten eboreus14 sites
- Crassostrea virginica14 sites
- Nassarius vibex14 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 57 sites for Abra aequalis, 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
24 references- Miocene and Pliocene mollusks from Trinidad11
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions9
- Mollusca from the Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Virginia and North Carolina. Part 1. Pelecypoda9
- Checklist of megafossils from the James City Formation (Lower Pleistocene) at Johnson Point, Craven County, North Carolina4
- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America4
- Neogene and Quaternary geology of a stratigraphic test hole on Horn Island, Mississippi Sound3
- Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Mollusca from the James City and Chowan River Formations at Lee Creek Mine3
- Stratigraphy of newly exposed Quaternary sediments, eastern Orleans Parish, Louisiana3
- Stratigraphy of newly exposed Quaternary seduments, eastern Orleans Parish, Louisiana3
- Neogene Biostratigraphy of the Charlotte Harbor Area in Southwestern Florida3
- Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) vertebrate faunas from coastal Georgia2
- Community replacement of a Pleistocene Crepidula biostrome2
Each of the 72 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. 12 further references are not listed. 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 Abra aequalis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- (c) Jacob Weston, some rights reserved (CC BY)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Abra aequalis 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 itAbra through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Say 1822)