Bulimulus
Searched as Bulimulus (Hyperaulax) americanus laxus. The Paleobiology Database treats Bulimulus as the accepted name.
Bulimulus is a genus of small to medium-sized tropical or sub-tropical, air-breathing land snails, pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the subfamily Bulimulinae within the family Bulimulidae.

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
- BulimulinaePBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 6.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 27.3 Mya and 20.45 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Bulimulus on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
2 occurrencesThese 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
1 formation
- Arcadia Formation · Hawthorn Group2
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The named rock units Bulimulus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Bulimulus and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Bulimulus and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
339 taxa- Biomphalaria reversa4 sites
- Biomphalaria walteri4 sites
- Physa4 sites
- Pupoides (Ischnopupoides) gnocco3 sites
- Succineidae3 sites
- Amnicola2 sites
- Anura2 sites
- Bahiensis priscus2 sites
- Biomphalaria manya2 sites
- Eoborus2 sites
- Helicina2 sites
- Polygyra2 sites
- Pupoides2 sites
- ? Coniophiidae indet.1 site
- Acar domingensis1 site
- Acila (Truncacila) demessa1 site
- Acteocina1 site
- Acteon1 site
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Alligator mississippiensis1 site
- Ampullina (Ampullinopsis) amphora1 site
- Anadara1 site
- Anadara hypomela silicata1 site
- Anadara latidentata ballista1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Bulimulus, 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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 Bulimulus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Manuel CABALLER
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bulimulus 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, “Bulimulus”
- 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 itBulimulinae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1814