Lirularia lirulata
Lirularia lirulata, common name the pearly top shell, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Trochidae, the top snails.

H. Pilsbry · 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- Also called
- pearly top shellPBDB
- Sits inside
- LirulariaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Trochidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Trochidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Trochidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Lirularia lirulata 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
8 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
3 formations
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The named rock units Lirularia lirulata 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.
Lirularia lirulata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lirularia lirulata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
383 taxa- Callianax biplicata6 sites
- Caesia fossatus5 sites
- Caesia perpinguis5 sites
- Ameritella carpenteri4 sites
- Crepidula adunca4 sites
- Crepidula nummaria4 sites
- Crepipatella lingulata4 sites
- Cryptomya californica4 sites
- Hiatella arctica4 sites
- Homalopoma (Homalopoma) luridum4 sites
- Lirobittium rugatum4 sites
- Lirularia parcipicta4 sites
- Tresus nuttallii4 sites
- Acteocina culcitella3 sites
- Acteocina harpa3 sites
- Admete gracilior3 sites
- Antalis pretiosa3 sites
- Antiplanes catalinae3 sites
- Caecum crebricinctum3 sites
- Calliostoma canaliculatum3 sites
- Chlorostoma funebrale3 sites
- Clathurella canfieldi3 sites
- Clinocardium (Clinocardium) nuttallii3 sites
- Craniopsis cucullata3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Lirularia lirulata, 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
6 references- Late Pleistocene marine fauna, Goleta, California3
- Late Pleistocene marine paleoecology and zoogeography on Central California1
- Paleoecologic molluscan geography of the Californian Pleistocene1
- Paleontology and stratigraphy of some marine Pleistocene deposits in northwest Los Angeles Basin, California1
- Geologic Application of Biometrical Analysis of Molluscan Assemblages1
- The fossils of the Lower San Pedro fauna of the Nob Hill cut, San Pedro, California1
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 Lirularia lirulata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- H. Pilsbry
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lirularia lirulata 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 itLirularia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Carpenter 1864)