Olivella
Searched as Olivella mathewsoni umpquaensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Olivella as the accepted name.
Olivella, common name the dwarf olives, is a genus of small predatory sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the subfamily Olivellinae of the family Olividae, the olives. Olivella is the type genus of the family.

Manuel CABALLER · 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
- OlivellinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Olividae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Olividae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Olividae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 7.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 48.07 Mya and 41.03 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Olivella on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
2 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
1 formation
- Flournoy Formation · Umpqua Group2
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The named rock units Olivella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Olivella and its relatives
EoceneWhere Olivella and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,829 taxa- Anadara39 sites
- Turritella38 sites
- Macrocallista maculata26 sites
- Crepidula fornicata22 sites
- Crepidula plana22 sites
- Nassarius21 sites
- Balanus20 sites
- Tellina20 sites
- Architectonica nobilis19 sites
- Dentalium19 sites
- Mitrella19 sites
- Terebra19 sites
- Acteocina18 sites
- Calyptraea centralis18 sites
- Chione cancellata18 sites
- Marginella18 sites
- Nuculana acuta18 sites
- Polystira18 sites
- Calliostoma17 sites
- Cerithium17 sites
- Chlamys17 sites
- Glycymeris17 sites
- Mulinia lateralis17 sites
- Nuculana17 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 325 sites for Olivella, 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 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Olivella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Manuel CABALLER
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Olivella 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 itOlivellinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Swainson 1831