Cerastoderma
Searched as Cerastoderma edule felsense. The Paleobiology Database treats Cerastoderma as the accepted name.
Cerastoderma is a genus of marine bivalves in the family Cardiidae. It includes the common cockle Cerastoderma edule.

Féron Benjamin · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- CardiidaePBDB
- 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 4.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 15.98 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Cerastoderma 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
2 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.
Found in
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Cerastoderma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cerastoderma and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cerastoderma and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,641 taxa- Anadara38 sites
- Parvilucina29 sites
- Corbula (Caryocorbula)27 sites
- Nuculana27 sites
- Yoldia27 sites
- Chlamys24 sites
- Pseudochama22 sites
- Crassatella densus21 sites
- Nassarius (Uzita)21 sites
- Nucula21 sites
- Cancellaria19 sites
- Tectonatica19 sites
- Acteocina18 sites
- Cardium (Cerastoderma) waltonianum18 sites
- Crassinella18 sites
- Ostrea18 sites
- Anadara (Diluvarca) santarosana17 sites
- Calyptraea centralis17 sites
- Natica judsoni16 sites
- Neverita16 sites
- Ringicula16 sites
- Varicorbula disparilis16 sites
- Anomia15 sites
- Sulcularia15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 118 sites for Cerastoderma, 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
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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Cerastoderma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Féron Benjamin
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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 itCardiidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Mörch 1853)