Cepaea
Searched as Cepaea silvestrina gottschicki. The Paleobiology Database treats Cepaea as the accepted name.
Cepaea is a genus of large air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the family Helicidae. The shells are often brightly coloured and patterned with brown stripes. The two living species in this genus, C. nemoralis and C. hortensis, are widespread and common in Western and Central Europe. In North America, C. hortensis is native on the northeast coast, but both species have been introduced elsewhere, and they are also spreading further east in Europe. Both have been influential model species for ongoing studies of genetics and natural selection. Like many Helicidae, these snails use love darts during mating.

sarefo · CC BY-SA 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
- HelicidaePBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 1.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 12.8 Mya and 11.63 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Cepaea on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
1 occurrences- Miocene100%
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.
Cepaea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cepaea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
673 taxa- Limax13 sites
- Helicidae9 sites
- Testudo9 sites
- Democricetodon mutilus8 sites
- Ophisaurus8 sites
- Planorbarius cornu8 sites
- Pseudochloritis incrassata8 sites
- Gastrocopta nouletiana7 sites
- Lacerta7 sites
- Megacricetodon minor7 sites
- Democricetodon minor gracilis6 sites
- Galba dupuyiana6 sites
- Galerix6 sites
- Lymnaea dilatata6 sites
- Pomatias6 sites
- Prolagus oeningensis6 sites
- Spermophilinus bredai6 sites
- Talpidae6 sites
- Triptychia6 sites
- Aves5 sites
- Eumyarion bifidus5 sites
- Gastrocopta acuminata5 sites
- Heteroxerus5 sites
- Microdyromys5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Cepaea, 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 1 occurrence 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 Cepaea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- sarefo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cepaea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cepaea”
- 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 itHelicidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Held 1838