Hiatellidae
Hiatellidae is a taxonomic family of saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs. This family is placed in the order Adapedonta.

Jan Johan ter Poorten; modified by Tom Meijer · 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
- HiatelloideaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 241 million years on record.
The record covers at least 241.464 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,872 occurrences of Hiatellidae 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
1,872 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous10%
- Late Cretaceous14%
- Paleocene5%
- Eocene8%
- Oligocene8%
- Miocene20%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene17%
- 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
393 formations
- Lefipán Formation44
- Submeseta Formation28
- Lillo Formation27
- Santa Susana Formation26
- Roca Formation · Malargüe Group25
- Pico Formation23
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The named rock units Hiatellidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 369 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 520 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Hiatellidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Hiatellidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
2,909 taxa- Panopea147 sites
- Nuculana55 sites
- Nucula45 sites
- Cucullaea36 sites
- Granocardium35 sites
- Pholadomya34 sites
- Cardium33 sites
- Ostrea33 sites
- Astarte32 sites
- Arca30 sites
- Modiolus30 sites
- Cymbophora29 sites
- Cyprimeria29 sites
- Dentalium29 sites
- Syncyclonema29 sites
- Tenea29 sites
- Inoceramus28 sites
- Veniella conradi28 sites
- Aphrodina27 sites
- Glycymeris27 sites
- Linearis27 sites
- Turritella27 sites
- Crassatella vadosa26 sites
- Lima26 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,170 sites for Hiatellidae, 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
470 references- Molluscs at the K/Pg boundary in Argentina: Extinction and recovery patterns. unpublished Ph.D. thesis74
- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America52
- Jura Vaudois et Neuchatelois50
- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages44
- Molluscan Systematics and Biostratigraphy43
- Quaternary marine stratigraphy and geochronology in central West Greenland40
- The Neogene Bivalvia (Heterodonta and Anomalodesmata) and Scaphopoda from Kallo and Doel (Oost Vlaanderen, Belgium)33
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions31
- Molluscan biostratigraphy of the Miocene Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain of North America31
- Neogene and Paleogene Molluscan (Bivalvia) Cenozones of the Russian Northeast.27
- Faunas of the Pleistocene Champlain Sea24
- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene mollusca of the southern and eastern United States. Part 1. Pelecypoda, Amphineura, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda and Cephalopoda24
Each of the 1,872 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. 458 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 Hiatellidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Johan ter Poorten; modified by Tom Meijer
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Hiatellidae”
- 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 itHiatelloidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1824