Phaxas

Phaxas is a genus of small razor shells in the family Pharidae. Members of the genus have a pair of elongate valves and live in soft sediments on the sea bed. They have a muscular foot with which they can dig rapidly and a short siphon which they extend to the surface of the substrate. They are suspension feeders.

Phaxas

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
CultellinaePBDB
Diet
suspension feederPBDB, for Pharidae
Life habit
infaunalPBDB, for Pharidae
Motility
facultatively mobilePBDB, for Pharidae
Vision
blindPBDB, for Bivalvia

Time the record covers

At least 45 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 774 ka.

Paleocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesEocene — about 4 of 7 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesPliocene — about 2 of 7 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 7 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–49 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences49–48 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences48–46 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences46–44 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences44–42 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences42–40 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences40–38 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.8–1.9 Mya — about 2 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences48.07 Mya2.58 Mya57 Mya0 Mya

7 occurrences of Phaxas 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

7 occurrences

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

3 formations

Futagojima — 33.00°N, 129.50°EKannondake — 33.05°N, 130.48°EAalter — 51.08°N, 3.45°E

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The named rock units Phaxas has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Phaxas and its relatives

Eocene

Where Phaxas and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

148 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Phaxas, 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

3 references

Each of the 7 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 Phaxas

Credit
Manuel CABALLER
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itCultellinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.