Helicodontidae
Helicodontidae is a family of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Helicoidea.

Francisco Welter Schultes · 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
- HelicoideaPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 13 million years on record.
The record covers at least 13.82 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 15.98 Mya to 129 ka.
8 occurrences of Helicodontidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
8 occurrences- Miocene88%
- Pleistocene13%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Helicodontidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Helicodontidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Helicodontidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
123 taxa- Oxyloma minima3 sites
- Acanthinula trochulus2 sites
- Acanthinula tuchoricensis2 sites
- Acicula lineata2 sites
- Aegopinella2 sites
- Agalactochilus silesiacus2 sites
- Agriolimacidae2 sites
- Apula coarctata2 sites
- Archaeozonites conicus2 sites
- Argna oppoliensis2 sites
- Azeca2 sites
- Azeca frechi2 sites
- Carychium nouleti2 sites
- Carychium stworzewiczae2 sites
- Cepaea eversa2 sites
- Cepaea sylvestrina2 sites
- Craspedopoma2 sites
- Daudebardia praecursor2 sites
- Discus2 sites
- Eostrobilops boettgeri2 sites
- Esuinella nana2 sites
- Galba dupuyiana2 sites
- Gastrocopta (Albinula) polonica2 sites
- Gastrocopta (Sinalbinula) ferdinandi2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Helicodontidae, 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
5 references- Opole (Poland) - a key locality for middle Miocene terrestrial mollusc faunas2
- Fossil gastropods from Miocene Lake Randeck Maar and its hinterland (SW Germany)2
- The fossil pulmonate snails of Sandelzhausen (Early/Middle Miocene, Germany): Succineidae, Testacelloidea and Helicoidea2
- Tephrochronology and tephrostratigraphy of two Pleistocene continental fossiliferous successions from central Italy1
- Zweiter Beitrag zur Binnenconchylienfauna des Miocäne von Oppeln in Schlesien1
Each of the 8 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 content1
Picture of Helicodontidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Francisco Welter Schultes
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Helicodontidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itHelicoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kobelt 1904