Cerithium columna
Cerithium columna is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Cerithiidae.

H. Zell · 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
- CerithiumPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Cerithium
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Cerithium
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cerithium
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
6 occurrences of Cerithium columna on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
6 occurrences- Miocene17%
- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene58%
- Holocene17%
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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Cerithium columna has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cerithium columna and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cerithium columna and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
50 taxa- Cypraea2 sites
- Strombus2 sites
- Acar domingensis1 site
- Aequipecten1 site
- Cancilla1 site
- Casmaria ponderosa1 site
- Cerithium (Ptychocerithium)1 site
- Chlamys sedanensis1 site
- Conus1 site
- Conus ebraeus1 site
- Conus imperialis1 site
- Costellariidae1 site
- Cymatium1 site
- Cypraea (Erosaria) caputserpentis1 site
- Cypraea (Erosaria) helvola1 site
- Dolicholatirus1 site
- Drupa1 site
- Echinocyamus polymorpha1 site
- Echinolampas1 site
- Erosaria poraria1 site
- Fragum1 site
- Fusinus1 site
- Harpa1 site
- Harpago chiragra1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Cerithium columna, 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
5 references- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Turritellidae through Strombidae)2
- Pleistocene mollusc assemblage in the slightly raised atoll lagoon of Niau (Tuamotu, French Polynesia)1
- Sedimentology of rocky shorelines: 4. Coarse gravel lithofacies, molluscan biofacies, and the stratigraphic and eustatic records in the type area of the Pleistocene Hulopoe Gravel, Lanai, Hawaii1
- An Early Pleistocene molluscan assemblage from Fiji: gastropod faunal composition, paleoecology and biogeography1
- Geology of Saipan, Mariana Islands: Part 1. General Geology1
Each of the 6 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 Cerithium columna
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- H. Zell
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cerithium columna 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 itCerithium through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sowerby l 1834