Busycotypus canaliculatus
Busycotypus canaliculatus, commonly known as the channeled whelk, is a very large predatory sea snail, a marine prosobranch gastropod, a busycon whelk, belonging to the family Busyconidae.

Skye McDavid · CC BY-SA 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
- BusycotypusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Neogastropoda
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Neogastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Neogastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.
30 occurrences of Busycotypus canaliculatus 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
30 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
7 formations
- Pamlico Formation8
- Acredale Formation4
- Norfolk Formation2
- Talbot Formation1
- Horry Clay Formation1
- Chowan River Formation1
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The named rock units Busycotypus canaliculatus 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.
Busycotypus canaliculatus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Busycotypus canaliculatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
292 taxa- Eupleura caudata7 sites
- Acteocina canaliculata6 sites
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa6 sites
- Crassostrea virginica6 sites
- Crepidula plana6 sites
- Ensis directus6 sites
- Neverita duplicatus6 sites
- Nucula (Nucula) proxima6 sites
- Anomia simplex5 sites
- Busycon carica5 sites
- Caryocorbula contracta5 sites
- Crepidula convexa5 sites
- Crepidula fornicata5 sites
- Ilyanassa trivittata5 sites
- Mercenaria campechiensis5 sites
- Mercenaria mercenaria5 sites
- Mulinia lateralis5 sites
- Abra aequalis4 sites
- Angulus texanus4 sites
- Barnea truncata4 sites
- Crassinella lunulata4 sites
- Cumingia tellinoides4 sites
- Divalinga quadrisulcata4 sites
- Eontia ponderosa4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Busycotypus canaliculatus, 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
7 references- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America21
- The fauna and paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene marine sediments of southeastern Virginia3
- Geology of the Newport News South and Bowers Hill quadrangles, Virginia2
- Mollusca: Fort Thompson Formation (Late Pleistocene)1
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions1
- Paleoecology of a Pliocene coral thicket from North Carolina: an example of temporal change in community structure and function1
- Post-Pleiocene Fossils of South Carolina1
Each of the 30 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 Busycotypus canaliculatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Skye McDavid
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Busycotypus canaliculatus 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 itBusycotypus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)