Cyrtopleura costata

Cyrtopleura costata, or the angel wing clam, is a bivalve mollusc in the family Pholadidae. It is found in shallow parts of the northwest Atlantic Ocean and also in the North Sea coast of Scotland and the western coast of the Adriatic Sea in a remote area in the Marche region in central Italy. It lives on the seabed, where it digs its burrows through soft sand and mud using a very slow, revolving movement. These burrows can take years to form, and can reach a maximum depth of 8ft, but always below 3 feet (0.91 m) at the lowest tide.

Cyrtopleura costata

MerlinCharon · CC0 · 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
CyrtopleuraPBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB, for Pholadidae
Life habit
boringPBDB, for Pholadidae
Motility
stationaryPBDB, for Pholadidae
Vision
blindPBDB, for Bivalvia

Time the record covers

At least 762 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pliocene — about 0 of 13 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 6 of 13 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 7 of 13 occurrences3.7–3.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.6–3.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.9–2.7 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.5–2.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.2–2.0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.0–1.9 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.9–1.8 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.8–1.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.4–1.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.1–957 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences957 ka–820 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences820 ka–683 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137 ka–0 Mya — about 10 occurrences774 ka11.7 ka4.1 Mya0 Mya

13 occurrences of Cyrtopleura costata on record. 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

13 occurrences

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

Michoud — 30.05°N, 89.96°WCaloosahatchee — 27.77°N, 82.68°WCaloosahatchee — 26.75°N, 81.51°WCaloosahatchee — 26.75°N, 80.93°WNew Orleans Barrier Trend — 30.05°N, 89.96°WAcredale — 36.79°N, 76.17°WTalbot — 38.26°N, 76.42°WFort Thompson — 26.76°N, 81.44°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Cyrtopleura costata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

558 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Cyrtopleura costata, 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

Each of the 13 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 content2

Picture of Cyrtopleura costata

Credit
MerlinCharon
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow 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 itCyrtopleura through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)