Chaetopleura
Chaetopleura is a genus of chitons in the family Chaetopleuridae. The species within this genus are marine molluscs.

Seascapeza · 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
- ChaetopleuridaePBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Motility
- facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Polyplacophora
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
15 occurrences of Chaetopleura 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
15 occurrences- Miocene20%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene73%
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
- James City Formation4
- Quaternary terrace Formation3
- Kirkwood Formation2
- Bermont Formation1
- "Imperial" Formation1
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The named rock units Chaetopleura has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chaetopleura and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Chaetopleura and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
480 taxa- Nucula (Nucula) proxima7 sites
- Crepidula fornicata6 sites
- Crepidula plana6 sites
- Astyris lunata5 sites
- Boonea seminuda5 sites
- Conradostrea sculpturata5 sites
- Epitonium5 sites
- Mulinia lateralis5 sites
- Nassarius antillarum5 sites
- Nuculana acuta5 sites
- Polinices5 sites
- Seila adamsii5 sites
- Sphenia5 sites
- Abra aequalis4 sites
- Anadara aequicostata4 sites
- Balanus4 sites
- Boonea impressa4 sites
- Brachyura4 sites
- Busycon4 sites
- Carolinapecten eboreus4 sites
- Cliona4 sites
- Cotonopsis (Cotonopsis) lafresnayi4 sites
- Crepidula convexa4 sites
- Cribrilina4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Chaetopleura, 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- Checklist of megafossils from the James City Formation (Lower Pleistocene) at Johnson Point, Craven County, North Carolina4
- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California4
- Miocene invertebrate fauna of New Jersey2
- The first Miocene chiton fauna from the northeastern Pacific1
- The Pleistocene molluscan fauna from Leisley Shell Pit 1, Hillsborough County, Florida1
- Late Tertiary and Early Quaternary Fossil Mollusca for the Hondeklip Area, Cape Province, South Africa1
- Report on Pleistocene Molluscan Fauna at Capistrano Beach, Orange County, Calif1
- Fossil chitons of Western North America1
Each of the 15 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 Chaetopleura
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Seascapeza
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chaetopleura was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource 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 itChaetopleuridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Shuttleworth 1853