Penitella

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- MartesiinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Life habit
- boringPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
63 occurrences of Penitella on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
63 occurrences- Oligocene3%
- Miocene16%
- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene72%
- 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
17 formations
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation14
- Careaga Sandstone Formation5
- Unnamed Formation4
- Etolonskaya Formation2
- Il'inskaya Formation2
- Sankebetsu Formation2
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The named rock units Penitella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Penitella and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Penitella and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,169 taxa- Callianax biplicata29 sites
- Leukoma staminea26 sites
- Tresus nuttallii22 sites
- Glossaulax reclusiana21 sites
- Lottia insessa21 sites
- Petricola (Petricola) carditoides21 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus21 sites
- Caesia fossatus20 sites
- Epilucina californica20 sites
- Glycymeris septentrionalis20 sites
- Alia carinata19 sites
- Amphissa versicolor19 sites
- Caesia perpinguis19 sites
- Californiconus californicus19 sites
- Chlorostoma funebrale19 sites
- Crepidula adunca19 sites
- Cumingia californica19 sites
- Diodora aspera19 sites
- Callianax pedroana18 sites
- Crassadoma gigantea18 sites
- Cryptomya californica18 sites
- Dentalium neohexagonum18 sites
- Glans carpenteri18 sites
- Hima cooperi18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 39 sites for Penitella, and this reads all 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
28 references- Geology and paleontology of the Santa Maria District California7
- A review of the Quaternary Mollusca of the Palos Verdes Peninsula6
- Neogene and Paleogene Molluscan (Bivalvia) Cenozones of the Russian Northeast.6
- The Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene of San Pedro, California5
- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California4
- Late Pleistocene megafauna of Cayucos, California, and its zoogeographic significance4
- Late Pleistocene marine paleoecology and zoogeography on Central California3
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico3
- Cenozoic molluscan (Bivavia) cenozone of Hokkaido, Northern Japan2
- Neogene and Paleogene Molluscan (Bivalvia) Cenozones of Sakhalin and Kurile Islands2
- Habitats and Sources of Pleistocene Mollusks at Torrey Pines Park, California2
- The paleontology of the Pleistocene molluscan fauna of the Newport Bay area, California2
Each of the 63 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. 16 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 Penitella
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Penitella conradi · usnm:invertebrate zoology:334654
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMartesiinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Valenciennes 1846)