Nautilus taiwanus
Nautilus taiwanus is an extinct species of nautiloid, the fossils of which were found in the Shimen and Houdongkeng formations, of the early Miocene, in Nantou County, Taiwan.

宜蘭第一公民 · CC BY-SA 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
- NautilusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Nautilidae
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Nautilidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Nautilidae
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda
Time the record covers
At most 7.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 15.98 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Nautilus taiwanus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
3 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Nautilus taiwanus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Nautilus taiwanus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Nautilus taiwanus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
10 taxa- Balanus1 site
- Coccolithus pelagicus1 site
- Cyclocargolithus floridanus1 site
- Discoaster deflandrei1 site
- Flabellum1 site
- Helicosphaera carteri1 site
- Operculina1 site
- Reticulofenestra1 site
- Sphenolithus1 site
- Sphenolithus moriformis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Nautilus taiwanus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- Kummelonautilus taiwanum sp. nov. (Nautilida) from the early Miocene Shihmen Formation, Chungliao, Nantou, west-central Taiwan2
- Miocene Nautilus (Mollusca, Cephalopoda) from Taiwan, and a review of the Indo-Pacific fossil record of Nautilus1
Each of the 3 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 Nautilus taiwanus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- 宜蘭第一公民
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nautilus taiwanus 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 itNautilus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Huang 2002)