Metaxia
Metaxia is a genus of minute sea snails with right-handed shell-coiling, marine gastropod mollusks or micromollusks in the family Triphoridae, which are mostly left-handed in shell-coiling.

John Bollons (collector) · 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- Sits inside
- MetaxiinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Triphoridae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Triphoridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Triphoridae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 20 million years on record.
The record covers at least 20.45 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
18 occurrences of Metaxia 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
18 occurrences- Miocene6%
- Pliocene11%
- Pleistocene83%
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
10 formations
- Quaternary terrace Formation3
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation2
- Palos Verdes Formation2
- Unnamed Formation1
- Ortovero Clay Formation1
- Falun de Saucats Formation1
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The named rock units Metaxia 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.
Metaxia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Metaxia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,147 taxa- Thylacodes squamigerus8 sites
- Callianax biplicata7 sites
- Epilucina californica7 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata7 sites
- Mitrella tuberosa7 sites
- Seila montereyensis7 sites
- Antisabia panamensis6 sites
- Caesia fossatus6 sites
- Californiconus californicus6 sites
- Crepidula onyx6 sites
- Crepipatella lingulata6 sites
- Dentalium neohexagonum6 sites
- Fissurella volcano6 sites
- Hiatella arctica6 sites
- Hipponix tumens6 sites
- Lottia scabra6 sites
- Mopalia muscosa6 sites
- Paciocinebrina lurida6 sites
- Acanthinucella spirata5 sites
- Acteocina culcitella5 sites
- Alia carinata5 sites
- Caecum californicum5 sites
- Caecum crebricinctum5 sites
- Caesia perpinguis5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Metaxia, 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
12 references- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California4
- Late Pleistocene invertebrates of the Newport Bay area, California4
- Seagrass-Associated Molluscan and Fish Communities from the Early Pleistocene of the Island of Rhodes (Greece)1
- Révision des Gastropoda (Mollusca) du stratotype de L'Aquitanien (Miocéne inf.) site de Saucats "Lariey", Gironde, France1
- A paleobiotic survey of Caribbean faunas from the Neogene of the Isthmus of Panama1
- Notes on some Pliocene gastropods from Rio Torsero, Western Liguria, Italy1
- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California1
- Pleistocene invertebrates from Punta China, Baja California, Mexico, with remarks on the composition of the Pacific coast Quaternary faunas1
- Marine Pleistocene mollusks from the Galapagos Islands1
- Report on Pleistocene Molluscan Fauna at Capistrano Beach, Orange County, Calif1
- The fossils of the Lower San Pedro fauna of the Nob Hill cut, San Pedro, California1
- Wood, 18481
Each of the 18 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 Metaxia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- John Bollons (collector)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Metaxia 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Metaxia”
- 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 itMetaxiinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Monterosato 1884