Drilliidae
The Drilliidae are a taxonomic family of small predatory sea snails with high-spired shells. They are classified as marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.

Jan Delsing · 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
- ConoideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Conoidea
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Conoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Conoidea
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 55 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 61.66 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,050 occurrences of Drilliidae 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
1,050 occurrencesThese 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
163 formations
- Gatun Formation110
- Shoal River Formation · Alum Bluff Group64
- Bowden Formation · Coastal Group30
- Castilletes Formation28
- Nancy Point Formation · Bocas del Toro Group26
- Pico Formation22
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The named rock units Drilliidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 139 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 176 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Drilliidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Drilliidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
3,073 taxa- Turritella40 sites
- Limopsis38 sites
- Varicorbula gibba34 sites
- Astarte (Astarte) radiata32 sites
- Lentigodentalium32 sites
- Limopsis (Limopsis) aurita32 sites
- Spiroplectammina carinata32 sites
- Elphidium31 sites
- Scapharca (Scapharca) diluvii31 sites
- Venus (Ventricoloidea) multilamella31 sites
- Cibicides lobatulus30 sites
- Lunulites30 sites
- Reussirella30 sites
- Textularia gramen30 sites
- Cibicides dutemplei29 sites
- Dentalina konincki29 sites
- Dentalium (Pseudantilis)29 sites
- Cyclocardia28 sites
- Dentalina28 sites
- Globulina gibba28 sites
- Gouldia (Gouldia) minima28 sites
- Parvicardium28 sites
- Yoldia (Yoldia) glaberrima28 sites
- Yoldiella28 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 387 sites for Drilliidae, and this reads 240 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
181 references- A paleobiotic survey of Caribbean faunas from the Neogene of the Isthmus of Panama73
- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel70
- Geology and paleontology of canal zone and adjoing parts of Panama: Description of Tertiary mollusks (gastropods: Eulimidae, Marginellidae to Helminthoglyptidae).70
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions54
- The Molluscan Fauna of the Alum Bluff Group of Florida51
- Molluschi marini del Plio-Pleistocene dell'Emilia-Romagna e della Toscana, Conoidea, Vol. 1 - Drilliidae e Turridae37
- Neogene molluscs, shallow marine paleoenvironments, and chronostratigraphy of the Guajira Peninsula, Colombia32
- Die Fauna des marinen Miozäns von Kevelaer (Niederrhein). Band 4 Gastropoda ab Mitridae32
- Mollusca: Shoal River Formation (Middle Miocene30
- Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement28
- Skwarko, 199423
- Testing for patterns of faunal persistence in the early Oligocene Byram Formation of Mississippi16
Each of the 1,050 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. 169 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 Drilliidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Delsing
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Drilliidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Drilliidae”
- 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 itConoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Olsson 1964)