Petricolaria pholadiformis
Petricolaria pholadiformis, common names false angelwing, or false angel wing (US), and American piddock (UK), is a species of saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Veneridae, the Venus clams.

Erik Veldhuis; Modified by Tom Meijer · 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
- Petricola (Petricolaria)PBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Petricola
- Life habit
- boringPBDB, for Petricola
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Petricola
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
29 occurrences of Petricolaria pholadiformis 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
29 occurrences- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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
8 formations
- Pamlico Formation6
- Acredale Formation3
- Michoud Formation2
- Waccamaw Formation2
- New Orleans Barrier Trend Formation1
- Canepatch Formation1
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The named rock units Petricolaria pholadiformis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Petricolaria pholadiformis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Petricolaria pholadiformis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
430 taxa- Angulus texanus10 sites
- Abra aequalis9 sites
- Crassinella lunulata9 sites
- Astyris lunata8 sites
- Mulinia lateralis8 sites
- Caryocorbula contracta7 sites
- Crassostrea virginica7 sites
- Crepidula fornicata7 sites
- Crepidula plana7 sites
- Mercenaria campechiensis7 sites
- Neverita duplicatus7 sites
- Nucula (Nucula) proxima7 sites
- Turbonilla interrupta7 sites
- Acteocina canaliculata6 sites
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa6 sites
- Anomia simplex6 sites
- Dinocardium robustum6 sites
- Eontia ponderosa6 sites
- Eupleura caudata6 sites
- Lunarca ovalis6 sites
- Nuculana acuta6 sites
- Parvilucina multistriata6 sites
- Raeta (Raeta) plicatella6 sites
- Tagelus plebeius6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Petricolaria pholadiformis, 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
8 references- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America17
- The fauna and paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene marine sediments of southeastern Virginia3
- Stratigraphy of newly exposed Quaternary sediments, eastern Orleans Parish, Louisiana2
- Stratigraphy of newly exposed Quaternary seduments, eastern Orleans Parish, Louisiana2
- Mollusca from the Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Virginia and North Carolina. Part 1. Pelecypoda2
- Neogene Stratigraphy of the lower Coast Plain of the Carolinas1
- Recherches sur le Neogene et le Quaternaire marins de la cote Atlantique du Maroc1
- Pliocene and Pleistocene1
Each of the 29 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. 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 content1
Picture of Petricolaria pholadiformis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Erik Veldhuis; Modified by Tom Meijer
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Petricolaria pholadiformis was found in Sketchfab.
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
- 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 itPetricola (Petricolaria) through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lamarck 1818)