Lottia gigantea

Lottia gigantea, common name the owl limpet, is a species of sea snail, a true limpet, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Lottiidae. Its genome has been sequenced at the Joint Genome Institute.

Lottia gigantea

Uncredited · 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
owl limpetPBDB
Sits inside
LottiaPBDB
Diet
grazerPBDB, for Lottiidae
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Lottiidae
Motility
facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB, for Lottiidae
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 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pliocene — about 0 of 21 occurrencesPleistocene — about 21 of 21 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 21 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.5–2.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.4–2.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.2–2.1 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.1–2.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.0–1.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.1–1.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.0–924 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences924 ka–821 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences821 ka–719 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences719 ka–616 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences616 ka–513 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences513 ka–411 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences411 ka–308 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences308 ka–205 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences205 ka–103 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences103 ka–0 Mya — about 9 occurrences3.08 Mya0 Mya

21 occurrences of Lottia gigantea 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

21 occurrences

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

4 formations

Unnamed — 33.24°N, 119.55°WUnnamed — 33.24°N, 119.47°WDiscovery Point — 29.00°N, 118.27°WDiscovery Point — 29.00°N, 118.23°WPalos Verdes Sand — 33.60°N, 117.88°WPalos Verdes Sand — 33.73°N, 118.29°WSan Pedro Sand — 33.74°N, 118.28°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Lottia gigantea 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.

Lottia gigantea and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Lottia gigantea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

746 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Lottia gigantea, 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

11 references

Each of the 21 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 Lottia gigantea

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Lottia gigantea 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 itLottia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sowerby 1834