Dendropoma
Dendropoma is a genus of irregularly coiled sea snails known as "worm shells" or "worm snails". These are marine gastropod molluscs in the family Vermetidae, the worm snails.

Miguelverdu Javier Guallart, Marta Calvo · 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
- VermetidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Vermetidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Vermetidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Vermetidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
49 occurrences of Dendropoma 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
49 occurrences- Pliocene4%
- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene10%
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
11 formations
- Unnamed Formation13
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation6
- Waimanalo Formation2
- Palos Verdes Formation2
- Belmont Formation1
- Devonshire Formation1
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The named rock units Dendropoma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dendropoma and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Dendropoma and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,292 taxa- Epilucina californica27 sites
- Callianax biplicata25 sites
- Antisabia panamensis21 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata21 sites
- Lottia scabra21 sites
- Amphissa versicolor20 sites
- Californiconus californicus20 sites
- Fissurella volcano20 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus20 sites
- Chlorostoma funebrale19 sites
- Cumingia californica19 sites
- Eulithidium pulloides19 sites
- Homalopoma (Homalopoma) luridum19 sites
- Lacuna (Epheria) unifasciata19 sites
- Nutricola tantilla19 sites
- Crepidula onyx18 sites
- Diodora aspera18 sites
- Glans carpenteri18 sites
- Caecum californicum17 sites
- Lottia insessa17 sites
- Mytilus californianus17 sites
- Acmaea mitra16 sites
- Atrimitra idae16 sites
- Chama arcana16 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 38 sites for Dendropoma, 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
25 references- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California13
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico4
- The Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene of San Pedro, California4
- Late Pleistocene invertebrates of the Newport Bay area, California3
- A 300000-yr coral reef record of sea level changes, Mururoa atoll (Tuamotu archipelago, French Polynesia)2
- Fossil mollusks of Oahu, Hawaii Islands2
- The marine Pleistocene mollusks of Bermuda2
- The cool-water Timms Point Pleistocene horizon at San Pedro, California2
- On the reconciliation of biostratigraphy and strontium isotope stratigraphy of three southern Californian Plio-Pleistocene formations1
- Snapshot of a lower Pliocene Dendropoma reef from Sant Onofre (Baix Ebre Basin, Tarragona, NE Spain)1
- Quaternary marine terraces on Sal Island (Cape Verde archipelago)1
- Late Holocene reef growth and relative sea-level changes in Atol das Rocas, equatorial south Atlantic1
Each of the 49 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. 13 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 Dendropoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Miguelverdu Javier Guallart, Marta Calvo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- multimediapackreplicator
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dendropoma”
- 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 itVermetidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Moerch 1861)