Cittarium pica
Cittarium pica, common name the West Indian top shell or magpie shell, is a species of large edible sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Tegulidae. This species has a large black and white shell.

Louis Charles Kiener · 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- Sits inside
- CittariumPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Trochidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Trochidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Trochidae
- 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.
12 occurrences of Cittarium pica 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
12 occurrences- Pliocene17%
- Pleistocene75%
- Holocene8%
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
6 formations
- Devonshire Formation2
- Spencer's Point Formation2
- Belmont Formation1
- Falmouth Formation · Coastal Group1
- Araya Formation1
- Mare Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Cittarium pica 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.
Cittarium pica and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cittarium pica and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
87 taxa- Codakia orbicularis2 sites
- Lobatus gigas2 sites
- Macrocypraea zebra2 sites
- Acanthurus1 site
- Agaricia agaricites1 site
- Albula1 site
- Anisotremus1 site
- Anisotremus virginicus1 site
- Anolis1 site
- Archosargus1 site
- Arcopagia fausta1 site
- Asaphis deflorata1 site
- Aves1 site
- Balistidae1 site
- Belonidae1 site
- Brachidontes1 site
- Burhinus1 site
- Calamus1 site
- Carangidae1 site
- Caranx1 site
- Carcharhinidae1 site
- Chama1 site
- Charonia variegata1 site
- Cheloniidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Cittarium pica, 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
7 references- The marine Pleistocene mollusks of Bermuda5
- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of Jack and Winifred Gibson-Smith, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel2
- The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba1
- Late Prehistoric Lucayan occupation and subsistence on Middle Caicos Island, northern West Indies1
- The benthic mollusk faunas of two contrasting reef paleosubenvironments: Falmouth Formation (late Pleistocene, last interglacial), Jamaica1
- Reconnaissance geology of Anegada Island1
- Geology of the Republic of Haiti1
Each of the 12 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 Cittarium pica
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Louis Charles Kiener
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cittarium pica 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 itCittarium through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)