Aulacofusus
Aulacofusus is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the subfamily Neptuneinae of the family Buccinidae, the true whelks.

Manuel CABALLER · 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
- NeptuneinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Buccinidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 35 million years on record.
The record covers at least 37.71 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 41.03 Mya to 774 ka.
4 occurrences of Aulacofusus 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
4 occurrences- Eocene25%
- Miocene25%
- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene25%
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
4 formations
- Kovachinskaya Formation1
- Gubik Formation1
- Tomioka Formation · Taga Group1
- Tsubetsu Formation · Tsubetsu Group1
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The named rock units Aulacofusus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Aulacofusus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Aulacofusus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
133 taxa- Conchocele bisecta2 sites
- Cryptonatica janthostoma2 sites
- Fulgoraria (Musashia)2 sites
- Homalopoma2 sites
- Neptunea2 sites
- Aartsenia gouldi1 site
- Acesta1 site
- Acharax1 site
- Acharax johnsoni1 site
- Acila (Acila)1 site
- Acila mirabilis vigilia1 site
- Acirsa1 site
- Acmaea1 site
- Amaea1 site
- Anadara1 site
- Ancilla kovatschensis1 site
- Anomia1 site
- Antimelatoma1 site
- Antiplanes1 site
- Ariadnaria1 site
- Barnea1 site
- Bathybembix arquenteonitens hirasei1 site
- Batillaria1 site
- Beringius (Beringius) pressulus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Aulacofusus, 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
4 references- Deep-sea fossil molluscan assemblages from a new locality in the lowest Miocene Tsubetsu Formation in the Tsubetsu area, eastern Hokkaidō, Japan1
- Eocene gastropods of western Kamchatka - implications for high-latitude north Pacific biostratigraphy and biogeography1
- Pectinids from the Taga Group of the Joban Coalfield1
- Cenozoic Megafossils of Northern Alaska1
Each of the 4 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 Aulacofusus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Manuel CABALLER
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aulacofusus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Aulacofusus”
- 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 itNeptuneinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Dall 1918)