Ilyanassa obsoleta
The eastern mudsnail, Ilyanassa obsoleta, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Nassariidae, the nassa mud snails.

Naturalis Biodiversity Center · CC0 · 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
- IlyanassaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Nassariidae
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Nassariidae
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Nassariidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
35 occurrences of Ilyanassa obsoleta on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
35 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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
5 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Ilyanassa obsoleta 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.
Ilyanassa obsoleta and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Ilyanassa obsoleta and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
199 taxa- Ilyanassa trivittata7 sites
- Crassostrea virginica6 sites
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa5 sites
- Crepidula fornicata5 sites
- Crepidula plana5 sites
- Mercenaria mercenaria5 sites
- Neverita duplicatus5 sites
- Urosalpinx cinerea5 sites
- Astyris lunata4 sites
- Busycotypus canaliculatus4 sites
- Ensis directus4 sites
- Eontia ponderosa4 sites
- Eupleura caudata4 sites
- Mercenaria campechiensis4 sites
- Mya (Arenomya) arenaria4 sites
- Acteocina canaliculata3 sites
- Anomia simplex3 sites
- Busycon carica3 sites
- Caryocorbula contracta3 sites
- Crepidula convexa3 sites
- Nucula (Nucula) proxima3 sites
- Petricolaria pholadiformis3 sites
- Turbonilla interrupta3 sites
- Aligena elevata2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Ilyanassa obsoleta, 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- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America27
- Pliocene and Pleistocene4
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions2
- The fauna and paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene marine sediments of southeastern Virginia1
- Geology of the Newport News South and Bowers Hill quadrangles, Virginia1
Each of the 35 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ilyanassa obsoleta
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Naturalis Biodiversity Center
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ilyanassa obsoleta 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 itIlyanassa through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Say 1822)