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

Udo Schmidt from Deutschland · 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
- 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 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
17 occurrences of Cerithium litteratum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
17 occurrences- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene88%
- Holocene6%
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
5 formations
- Ironshore Formation4
- Grotto Beach Formation3
- Falmouth Formation · Coastal Group2
- Mount Hope Formation1
- Mare Formation1
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The named rock units Cerithium litteratum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cerithium litteratum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cerithium litteratum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
165 taxa- Columbella mercatoria3 sites
- Americardia media2 sites
- Anadara notabilis2 sites
- Arcopagia fausta2 sites
- Atys2 sites
- Bulla striata2 sites
- Cerithium eburneum2 sites
- Cerithium lutosum2 sites
- Chione cancellata2 sites
- Lamarcka imbricata2 sites
- Lucinisca nassula2 sites
- Manicina areolata2 sites
- Pusula pediculus2 sites
- Rissoina2 sites
- Tegula2 sites
- Abra aequalis1 site
- Acar domingensis1 site
- Acteocina1 site
- Acteocina bidentata1 site
- Acteocina canaliculata1 site
- Acteocina candei1 site
- Adrana newcombi1 site
- Agaricia agaricites1 site
- Alaba incerta1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Cerithium litteratum, 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
8 references- Distribution of Bivalves and Gastropod in the Pleistocene Ironshore Formation, Grand Cayman, British West Indies4
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions3
- Stability of Late Pleistocene Reef Mollusks from San Salvador Island, Bahamas3
- The benthic mollusk faunas of two contrasting reef paleosubenvironments: Falmouth Formation (late Pleistocene, last interglacial), Jamaica2
- A geological reconnaissance of the Dominican Republic2
- Gastropod Associations as a Proxy for Seagrass Vegetation in a Tropical, Carbonate Setting (San Salvador, Bahamas)1
- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of Jack and Winifred Gibson-Smith, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel1
- Geology of the Republic of Haiti1
Each of the 17 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 litteratum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cerithium litteratum was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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. (Born 1778)