Maxwellia gemma

Maxwellia gemma, commonly known as gem murex, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or rock snails.

Maxwellia gemma

Cricket Raspet · CC BY 4.0 · 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
Also called
gem murexPBDB
Sits inside
MaxwelliaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Muricidae
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Muricidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Muricidae
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda

Time the record covers

At least 2.4 million years on record.

The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pliocene — about 5 of 21 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 16 of 21 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 21 occurrences3.7–3.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.6–3.4 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences3.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences2.9–2.7 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.5–2.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.2–2.0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.0–1.9 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.9–1.8 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.8–1.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.4–1.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.1–957 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences957 ka–820 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences820 ka–683 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences683 ka–547 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences547 ka–410 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences410 ka–273 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences273 ka–137 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences137 ka–0 Mya — about 9 occurrences2.58 Mya129 ka4.1 Mya0 Mya

21 occurrences of Maxwellia gemma 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

6 formations

Pico — 34.42°N, 118.70°WLomita Marl — 33.75°N, 118.30°WQuaternary terrace — 33.75°N, 118.33°WPalos Verdes Sand — 33.99°N, 118.45°WPalos Verdes Sand — 33.60°N, 117.88°WUnnamed — 33.24°N, 119.55°WFernando — 34.05°N, 118.25°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Maxwellia gemma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Maxwellia gemma and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Maxwellia gemma and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

878 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Maxwellia gemma, 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

15 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. 3 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 content1

Picture of Maxwellia gemma

Credit
Cricket Raspet
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Maxwellia gemma 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 itMaxwellia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Sowerby 1879)