Nucula
Searched as Nucula cf. pectinata tenuicostata. The Paleobiology Database treats Nucula as the accepted name.
Nucula is a genus of very small saltwater clams. They are part of the family Nuculidae.

Eric A. Lazo-Wasem · CC0 · 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
- NuculidaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB, for Nuculidae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Nuculidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Nuculidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- coastal,inner shelf,outer shelf,oceanicPBDB, for Nuculidae
Time the record covers
At most 21 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 121.4 Mya and 100.5 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Nucula on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
1 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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.
Nucula and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Nucula and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2,292 taxa- Nuculana86 sites
- Gastropoda53 sites
- Eburneopecten scintillatus44 sites
- Crassatella vadosa43 sites
- Cyprimeria43 sites
- Veniella conradi43 sites
- Bivalvia41 sites
- Panopea41 sites
- Pycnodonte vesicularis41 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata40 sites
- Turritella40 sites
- Dentalium37 sites
- Idonearca capax37 sites
- Anomia argentaria36 sites
- Bryozoa35 sites
- Caestocorbula wailesiana35 sites
- Modiolus33 sites
- Venericardia (Rotundicardia) diversidentata33 sites
- Vertebrata33 sites
- Aphrodina32 sites
- Corbula densata32 sites
- Syncyclonema32 sites
- Granocardium31 sites
- Gryphaeostrea vomer31 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,417 sites for Nucula, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Nucula
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Eric A. Lazo-Wasem
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Nucula (Lamellinucula) crenulata · FMNH:Invertebrate Zoology:306096
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Nucula”
- 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 itNuculidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lamarck 1799)