Acanthina unicornis
Acanthina unicornis is a species of sea snail, which is a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or the rock snails.

Charles d'Orbigny · 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
- AcanthinaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Muricidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Muricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Muricidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 780 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
15 occurrences of Acanthina unicornis 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
15 occurrences- Pliocene49%
- Pleistocene51%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
7 formations
- Formación Coquimbo Formation5
- Coquimbo Formation2
- Pongo Formation2
- Depósitos Litorales Formation2
- Huacllaco Formation1
- La Planchada Formation1
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The named rock units Acanthina unicornis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acanthina unicornis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acanthina unicornis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
72 taxa- Balanus7 sites
- Concholepas concholepas4 sites
- Choromytilus chorus3 sites
- Chorus3 sites
- Crassilabrum crassilabrum3 sites
- Glycymeris ovata3 sites
- Mulinia edulis3 sites
- Argopecten purpuratus2 sites
- Bivalvia2 sites
- Chlamys2 sites
- Chlamys hupeanus2 sites
- Concholepas camerata2 sites
- Crepipatella dilatata2 sites
- Fusinus2 sites
- Incatella cingulata2 sites
- Mulinia2 sites
- Oliva peruviana2 sites
- Ostrea2 sites
- Prisogaster niger2 sites
- Retrotapes lenticularis2 sites
- Turritella2 sites
- Xanthochorus xuster2 sites
- Alopias1 site
- Aluterus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Acanthina unicornis, 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
8 references- Geología del Área Carrizalillo-El Tofo, Regiones de Atacama y Coquimbo3
- Geología del Área de Adacollo-Puerto Aldea, Región de Coquimbo, Carta No. 963
- Geología de la Carta Freirina-El Morado, Región de Atacama. Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería, Carta Geológica de Chile, Serie Geología Básica, No. 100, 50 p, 1 mapa escala 1:100.0003
- Lithostratigraphy and Biostratigraphy of Pliocene and Pleistocene Marine Deposits and Age of the highest Marine Terrace from the Sacaco Basin and its Environs (southern Peru)2
- A new Pliocene mollusk fauna from Mejillones, northern Chile1
- Bay sedimentation as controlled by regional crustal behaviour, local tectonics and eustatic sea-level changes: Coquimbo Formation (Miocene-Pliocene), Bay of Tongoy, central Chile1
- Pterorytis pacanana new species (Gastropoda: Muricidae): circumstantial evidence for late Pliocene El Niño events in southern Peru1
- Acanthina Fischer von Waldheim, 1807 (Gastropoda: Muricidae), an ocenebrine genus edemic to South America1
Each of the 15 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 Acanthina unicornis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles d'Orbigny
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Acanthina unicornis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itAcanthina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Bruguiére 1789)