Polyplacophora
Searched as Chiton. The Paleobiology Database treats Polyplacophora as the accepted name.
Chiton is a genus of chitons, a polyplacophoran mollusk in the family Chitonidae.
GrahamBould · Public Domain · 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- Also called
- chitonPBDB
- Sits inside
- SerialiaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- limitedPBDB
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 486 million years on record.
The record covers at least 486.85 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 490.2 Mya to 0 Mya.
605 occurrences of Polyplacophora 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
605 occurrences- Cambrianunder 1%
- Ordovicianunder 1%
- Silurianunder 1%
- Devonianunder 1%
- Carboniferous4%
- Permian16%
- Early Jurassic2%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous1%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene4%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene6%
- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene48%
- Holocene1%
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
106 formations
- Sabbie di Altavilla Formation36
- Quaternary terrace Formation33
- Unnamed Formation31
- Road Canyon Formation26
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation20
- San Pedro Sand Formation13
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The named rock units Polyplacophora has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 82 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 218 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Polyplacophora and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Polyplacophora and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
4,632 taxa- Epilucina californica26 sites
- Callianax biplicata25 sites
- Schematochiton arthurcooperi24 sites
- Californiconus californicus23 sites
- Nutricola tantilla22 sites
- Cumingia californica20 sites
- Mitrella tuberosa20 sites
- Glans carpenteri19 sites
- Homalopoma (Homalopoma) luridum19 sites
- Lacuna (Epheria) unifasciata19 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata19 sites
- Antisabia panamensis18 sites
- Crepidula onyx18 sites
- Mytilus californianus18 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus18 sites
- Diodora aspera17 sites
- Leukoma staminea17 sites
- Lottia scabra17 sites
- Amphissa versicolor16 sites
- Chama arcana16 sites
- Hiatella arctica16 sites
- Mopalia muscosa16 sites
- Tenaturris variegata16 sites
- Caecum californicum15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 222 sites for Polyplacophora, 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
129 references- Fossil chitons of Western North America70
- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California40
- Notes on fossil chitons. 4. Polyplacophora from the Pliocene of Altavilla (NW Sicily)36
- Two new Permian chitons from west Texas (Mollusca: Polyplacophora)32
- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California31
- Permian Polyplacophora (Mollusca) from west Texas25
- Chitons and Gastropods (Haliotidae through Adeorbidae) from Western Pacific Islands25
- Fossil chitons from the Mesozoic - A checklist and bibliography21
- Late Pleistocene invertebrates of the Newport Bay area, California20
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico20
- Chitons (Polyplacophora) from Paleogene Strata in Western Washington State, U.S.A.14
- Report on Pleistocene Molluscan Fauna at Capistrano Beach, Orange County, Calif12
Each of the 605 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. 117 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Polyplacophora
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- GrahamBould
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows 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 itSerialia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (de Blainville 1816)