Cardium
Searched as Cardium (Trachycardium) stiriatum leonense. The Paleobiology Database treats Cardium as the accepted name.

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- CardiinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Cardiidae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Cardiidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Cardiidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 1.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Cardium on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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 occurrences- Pliocene100%
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
1 formation
- Jackson Bluff Formation · Alum Bluff Group2
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The named rock units Cardium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cardium and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Cardium and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
3,012 taxa- Turritella81 sites
- Serpula62 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata56 sites
- Arca55 sites
- Ostrea54 sites
- Veniella conradi50 sites
- Bryozoa49 sites
- Anomia argentaria48 sites
- Liopistha protexta47 sites
- Crassatella vadosa45 sites
- Glycymeris45 sites
- Cliona44 sites
- Nuculana44 sites
- Turritella vertebroides44 sites
- Corbula42 sites
- Panopea42 sites
- Turritella trilira41 sites
- Idonearca capax40 sites
- Cyprimeria39 sites
- Tellina37 sites
- Bellifusus35 sites
- Cubitostrea tecticosta35 sites
- Drilluta35 sites
- Astarte33 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 585 sites for Cardium, and this reads 240 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
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 content3

Picture of Cardium
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cardium maxicostatum · usnm:invertebrate zoology:767846
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCardiinae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758