Helicinidae
Helicinidae is a family of small tropical land snails, terrestrial operculate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Helicinoidea.

D. G. Robinson, A. Hovestadt, A. Fields & A. S. H. Breure · CC BY 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
- HelicinoideaPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 40 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka.
23 occurrences of Helicinidae 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
23 occurrences- Eocene17%
- Oligocene17%
- Miocene48%
- Pleistocene17%
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
7 formations
- Arcadia Formation · Hawthorn Group5
- Deep River Formation3
- Shuler Formation1
- Upper Freshwater Molasse Formation1
- Skalica Formation1
- Edelény Formation1
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The named rock units Helicinidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Helicinidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Helicinidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,025 taxa- Helicina4 sites
- Planorbarius cornu4 sites
- Vertigo4 sites
- Amnicola3 sites
- Anomalocardia3 sites
- Blackia miocaenica3 sites
- Bulla ovulata3 sites
- Cyrena3 sites
- Discus3 sites
- Gastrocopta3 sites
- Glirulus lissiensis3 sites
- Helicina dubia3 sites
- Helicodiscus3 sites
- Hendersonia3 sites
- Hendersonia stillmani3 sites
- Hyla3 sites
- Lyria3 sites
- Mephitis mephitis3 sites
- Microtus pennsylvanicus3 sites
- Microtus pinetorum3 sites
- Microtus xanthognathus3 sites
- Modiolus3 sites
- Neogale vison3 sites
- Neotoma floridana3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Helicinidae, 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- Molluscs of the Tampa and Suwannee Limestones5
- Terrestrial, freshwater and brachyhaline Gastropoda from the Lower Miocene deposits of Oberdorf (Styria, Austria)3
- "Extralimital" Land Mollusks (Gastropoda) from the Deep River Formation, Montana: Evidence for Mesic Medial Tertiary Climate3
- Deshayes, 18242
- Molluscs as a major part of subtropical shallow-water carbonate production - an example from a Middle Miocene oolite shoal (Upper Serravallian, Austria)1
- Recent Advances on Multidisciplinary Research at Rudabánya, Late Miocene (MN9), Hungary: a compendium1
- Synopsis of the Late Miocene mollusc fauna of the classical sections Richardhof and Eichkogel in the Vienna Basin (Austria, Pannonian, MN 9-MN11)1
- An interesting new fossil dragonfly (Anisoptera: Libellulidae: “Brachydiplacini”) from the Miocene of Germany, with a discussion on the phylogeny of Tetrathemistinae and a fossil list for the locality Heggbach1
- Pre-Late Wisconsinan Pleistocene biota from southeastern Michigan, U.S.A.1
- Tropical ‘physiognomy’ of a land snail faunule from the Eocene of southern California [USA]1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- The Moore Pit local fauna; Pleistocene of Texas1
Each of the 23 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 Helicinidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- D. G. Robinson, A. Hovestadt, A. Fields & A. S. H. Breure
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Helicinidae was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was 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, “Helicinidae”
- 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 itHelicinoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Férussac 1822