Capulus
Capulus is a genus of small sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Capulidae, the cap snails.

Georges Jansoone ( JoJan ) · CC BY 3.0 · 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
- CapulidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Capulidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Capulidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB, for Capulidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 419 million years on record.
The record covers at least 419.62 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 422.7 Mya to 0 Mya.
213 occurrences of Capulus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
213 occurrences- Silurianunder 1%
- Carboniferousunder 1%
- Permian7%
- Late Triassic3%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous12%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene23%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene13%
- Pliocene15%
- Pleistocene19%
- 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
62 formations
- Moodys Branch Formation · Jackson Group28
- Prairie Bluff Formation8
- Esmeraldas Formation6
- Nacatoch Sand Formation5
- Gurabo Formation5
- Lillo Formation5
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The named rock units Capulus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 38 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 66 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Capulus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Capulus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,213 taxa- Turritella28 sites
- Dentalium20 sites
- Corbula16 sites
- Nuculana16 sites
- Caestocorbula wailesiana15 sites
- Calyptraea (Trochita) aperta15 sites
- Corbula densata15 sites
- Hipponix15 sites
- Venericardia (Rotundicardia) diversidentata15 sites
- Bryozoa14 sites
- Serpula14 sites
- Bathytormus flexurus13 sites
- Cardium13 sites
- Eburneopecten scintillatus13 sites
- Kapalmerella alveata13 sites
- Nucula13 sites
- Alveinus minutus12 sites
- Architectonica12 sites
- Chlamys12 sites
- Crassatella12 sites
- Natica permunda12 sites
- Spisula jacksonensis12 sites
- Anchura11 sites
- Calyptraphorus stamineus11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 131 sites for Capulus, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
79 references- La Malacofauna Plio-Pleistocenica del Torrente Stirone Parte IX. Strombidae, Aporrhaiidae, Calyptreidae, Capulidae, Xenophoridae, Vermetidae, Cypraeidae, Eocypraeidae, Triviidae, Eratoidae, Ovulidae, Naticidae28
- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene mollusca of the southern and eastern United States. Part 1. Pelecypoda, Amphineura, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda and Cephalopoda20
- Resilience of marine invertebrate communities during the early Cenozoic hyperthermals13
- Die Gastropoden und Lamellibranchiaten der Dyas von Timor12
- Fossil assemblages of a marine transgressive sand, Moody''s Branch Formation (Upper Eocene), Louisiana and Mississippi10
- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel8
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain8
- Pleistocene macrofossils from CRP-1 Drillhole, Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica7
- The larger invertebrate fossils of the Navarro group of Texas7
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions5
- Pliocene gastropod faunas from Kallo (Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium) - Part 2. Caenogastropoda: Potamididae-Tornidae5
- Les Mesogastropoda Fossiles du Cenozoïque étranger des Collections de L'Institute Royale des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique5
Each of the 213 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. 67 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Capulus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Georges Jansoone ( JoJan )
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Capulus ungaricus · SMF:384687
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Capulus”
- 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 itCapulidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Monfort 1810