Dosinia exoleta
Dosinia exoleta, common name the rayed artemis, is a saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusc in the family Veneridae, the venus clams.

Hectonichus · 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
- DosiniaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Dosinia
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Dosinia
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Dosinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
25 occurrences of Dosinia exoleta on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
25 occurrences- Miocene76%
- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene4%
- Holocene4%
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
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Dosinia exoleta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 20 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dosinia exoleta and its relatives
MioceneWhere Dosinia exoleta and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
635 taxa- Lithophaga lithophaga12 sites
- Conus11 sites
- Chama gryphoides10 sites
- Glycymeris10 sites
- Lima lima10 sites
- Arca noae9 sites
- Chlamys9 sites
- Barbatia (Barbatia) barbata8 sites
- Ostrea8 sites
- Talochlamys pusio8 sites
- Vermetus8 sites
- Coralliophaga7 sites
- Ctena decussata7 sites
- Cypraea7 sites
- Gastrochaena (Rocellaria) dubia7 sites
- Tarbellastraea reussiana7 sites
- Alvania6 sites
- Bryozoa6 sites
- Cerithium (Thericium) vulgatum6 sites
- Creusia6 sites
- Diplodonta (Diplodonta) rotundata6 sites
- Gastrochaena6 sites
- Haliotis tuberculata6 sites
- Pecten aduncus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Dosinia exoleta, 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
14 references- Yanakevich, 19777
- Les formations recifales coralliennes du Miocene superieur d'Algerie et du Maroc [Upper Miocene coral reef formations from Algeria and Morocco]5
- The Neogene Bivalvia (Heterodonta and Anomalodesmata) and Scaphopoda from Kallo and Doel (Oost Vlaanderen, Belgium)2
- Paleobiology from Museum collections: comparing historical and novel data on Upper Miocene molluscs of the Livorno Hills1
- New paleoenvironmental insights on the Miocene condensed phosphatic layer of Salento (southern Italy) unlocked by the coral‑mollusc fossil archive1
- Estudo zooarqueológico dos restos recuperados no estabelecimento industrial romano do Creiro (Arrábida, Setúbal)1
- The marine fossils malacofauna in a Plio-Pleistocene section from Vallin Buio (Livorno, Italy)1
- Nuove specie di Gasteropodi del Piacenziano di rio Crevalese, Castell’Arquato (Piacenza, Italia)1
- Coral microbialite environment in a Middle Miocene reef of Hungary1
- Messinian coral reefs of western Orania, Algeria1
- The Messinian reef complex of Melilla, northeastern Rif, Morocco1
- Occurence and taphonomy of bivalves from the Nijar reef (Messinian, Late Miocene, SE Spain)1
Each of the 25 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. 2 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 content1
Picture of Dosinia exoleta
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hectonichus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dosinia exoleta was found in Sketchfab.
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 itDosinia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)