Ostrea
Searched as Ostrea normalis caducaqua. The Paleobiology Database treats Ostrea as the accepted name.
Ostrea is a genus of edible oysters, marine bivalve mollusks in the family Ostreidae, the oysters.

Manfred Heyde · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- OstreidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Ostreidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Ostreidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Ostreidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- hypersaline,marine,brackishPBDB, for Ostreidae
Time the record covers
At most 6.9 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 27.3 Mya and 20.45 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Ostrea on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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 occurrencesThese 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
- Arcadia Formation · Hawthorn Group1
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The named rock units Ostrea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ostrea and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Ostrea and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
1,383 taxa- Bryozoa69 sites
- Turritella64 sites
- Vertebrata60 sites
- Serpula59 sites
- Striarca56 sites
- Anomia argentaria54 sites
- Cymbophora54 sites
- Nuculana50 sites
- Corbula49 sites
- Syncyclonema45 sites
- Trachycardium45 sites
- Turritella trilira43 sites
- Crassatella vadosa40 sites
- Cardium39 sites
- Anomia ornata38 sites
- Crenella serica38 sites
- Veniella conradi35 sites
- Cubitostrea tecticosta34 sites
- Caestocorbula (Caestocorbula) crassaplica33 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata33 sites
- Tellina33 sites
- Neogastropoda32 sites
- Camptonectes bubonis31 sites
- Turritella bilira31 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,751 sites for Ostrea, and this reads 240 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
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 content2
Picture of Ostrea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Manfred Heyde
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Ostrea”
- 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 itOstreidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758