Ostreidae
The Ostreidae, the true oysters, include most species of molluscs commonly consumed as oysters. Pearl oysters are not true oysters, and belong to the order Pteriida.

No machine-readable author provided. BetacommandBot assumed (based on copyright claims). · 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- Also called
- oysterPBDB
- Sits inside
- OstreoideaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- hypersaline,marine,brackishPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 274 million years on record.
The record covers at least 274.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 283.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
6,172 occurrences of Ostreidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
6,172 occurrences- Permianunder 1%
- Early Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Triassic1%
- Late Triassic3%
- Early Jurassic2%
- Middle Jurassic3%
- Late Jurassic2%
- Early Cretaceous6%
- Late Cretaceous21%
- Paleocene6%
- Eocene18%
- Oligocene5%
- Miocene16%
- Pliocene8%
- Pleistocene8%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
1048 formations
- Escondido Formation122
- Woodbine Formation91
- Castilletes Formation79
- Mancos Shale Formation74
- Corsicana Marl Formation72
- Kiowa Formation70
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The named rock units Ostreidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1,024 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 1,203 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ostreidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Ostreidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,577 taxa- Ostrea71 sites
- Nuculana43 sites
- Pycnodonte38 sites
- Inoceramidae36 sites
- Nucula35 sites
- Inoceramus34 sites
- Panopea34 sites
- Lima32 sites
- Turritella32 sites
- Bivalvia31 sites
- Bryozoa31 sites
- Pycnodonte vesicularis30 sites
- Anthozoa29 sites
- Astarte29 sites
- Modiolus29 sites
- Ammonoidea28 sites
- Cucullaea28 sites
- Cyprimeria27 sites
- Lucina27 sites
- Drepanocheilus26 sites
- Pholadomya26 sites
- Corbula24 sites
- Gastropoda24 sites
- Anomia22 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,585 sites for Ostreidae, 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
1,230 references- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrate Fossils from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the west gulf Coastal Plain156
- Stratigraphic Distribution of Paleocene and Eocene Fossils in the Eastern Gulf Coast Region152
- Neogene molluscs, shallow marine paleoenvironments, and chronostratigraphy of the Guajira Peninsula, Colombia124
- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene mollusca of the southern and eastern United States. Part 1. Pelecypoda, Amphineura, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda and Cephalopoda103
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions94
- Larger invertebrate fossils of the Woodbine formation (Cenomanian) of Texas92
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain80
- Geologie, Paleontologie et Paleoecologie du Bathonien au sud-ouest du Massif Ardennais74
- Paleoecology and Paleontology of the Lower Cretaceous Kiowa Formation, Kansas70
- The paleoecology of the Cenomanian-Turonian (Cretaceous) stage boundary extinctions at Black Mesa, Arizona65
- Recherches géologiques sur le Crétacé inférieur de l'Estremadura (Portugal)61
- Resilience of marine invertebrate communities during the early Cenozoic hyperthermals60
Each of the 6,172 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. 1,218 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Ostreidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- No machine-readable author provided. BetacommandBot assumed (based on copyright claims).
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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, “Ostreidae”
- 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 itOstreoidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rafinesque 1815