Astarte castanea
Astarte castanea, or the chestnut astarte, is a species of bivalve mollusc in the family Astartidae. It can be found along the Atlantic coast of North America, ranging from Nova Scotia to New Jersey.

Eric A. Lazo-Wasem · CC0 · 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
- AstartePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Crassatelloidea
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Crassatelloidea
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Crassatelloidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Crassatelloidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Crassatelloidea
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Astarte castanea 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
8 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Astarte castanea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Astarte castanea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Astarte castanea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
77 taxa- Acteocina canaliculata1 site
- Amphipoda1 site
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa1 site
- Angulus texanus1 site
- Anomia simplex1 site
- Argopecten gibbus1 site
- Astyris lunata1 site
- Atractodon1 site
- Balanus improvisus1 site
- Barnea truncata1 site
- Bornia1 site
- Branta bernicla1 site
- Buccinum undatum1 site
- Busycon carica1 site
- Busycotypus canaliculatus1 site
- Caecum cooperi1 site
- Cancer irroratus1 site
- Carcharias1 site
- Caryocorbula contracta1 site
- Colus pygmaeus1 site
- Crassinella lunulata1 site
- Crassostrea virginica1 site
- Crepidula convexa1 site
- Crepidula fornicata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Astarte castanea, 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
3 references- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America6
- The fauna and paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene marine sediments of southeastern Virginia1
- The marine Quaternary of the Canary Islands1
Each of the 8 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Astarte castanea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Eric A. Lazo-Wasem
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Astarte castanea 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 itAstarte through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Say 1822)