Phestia
Phestia is an extinct genus of clam belonging to order Nuculanida and family Nuculanidae.

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
- PhestiinaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feederPBDB, for Nuculanoidea
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Nuculanoidea
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Nuculanoidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 198 million years on record.
The record covers at least 452.8 Mya to 254.14 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 469.4 Mya to 251.902 Mya.
319 occurrences of Phestia on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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
319 occurrences- Ordovicianunder 1%
- Devonian18%
- Carboniferous45%
- Permian36%
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
115 formations
- Graham Formation · Cisco Group54
- Moscow Formation · Hamilton Group19
- Bangor Limestone Formation13
- Douling Formation10
- Imo Formation8
- Ford Formation7
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The named rock units Phestia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 91 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 21 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Phestia and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Phestia and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
1,921 taxa- Crinoidea41 sites
- Nuculopsis29 sites
- Astartella concentrica28 sites
- Palaeoneilo28 sites
- Aviculopecten26 sites
- Composita subtilita25 sites
- Glabrocingulum24 sites
- Echinoidea23 sites
- Euphemites23 sites
- Hustedia mormoni23 sites
- Composita22 sites
- Fenestella22 sites
- Kutorginella lasallensis22 sites
- Crurithyris planoconvexa20 sites
- Gastropoda20 sites
- Edmondia19 sites
- Neospirifer dunbari19 sites
- Schizodus19 sites
- Cleiothyridina18 sites
- Meekospira18 sites
- Tropidoleptus carinatus18 sites
- Nuculopsis girtyi17 sites
- Trepospira illinoisensis16 sites
- Nuculites15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 279 sites for Phestia, 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
113 references- Taxonomy and Paleoecology of the Bivalves from the Finis Shale (Pennsylvanian) of Texas26
- The surficial geology, paleontology, and paleoecology of the Finis Shale (Pennsylvanian, Lower Virgilian) in Jack County, Texas16
- Stratigraphic and Paleontologic Studies of the Pennsylvanian and Permian Rocks in North-Central Texas14
- The Paleontology and Paleoecology of the Lower Bangor Limestone (Chesterian, Mississippian)in northwestern Alabama13
- Bivalves from the upper part of the Permian in southern Hunan, China12
- The classification and distribution of the Hamilton and Chemung series of central and eastern New York12
- Lower Devonian bivalves from the Reefton Group, New Zealand10
- The Dynamics of Rapid, Asynchronous Biotic Turnover in the Middle Devonian Appalachian Basin of New York8
- Bivalves (Mollusca) from the Imo Formation (Mississippian, Chesterian) of North-Central Arkansas8
- Muromtseva and Guskov, 19847
- Work with Thayer collections, Yale Peabody Accession 7112, published, in part, "New perspectives on transitions between ecological-evolutionary subunits in the "type interval" for coordinated stasis", James J Zambito IV, Carlton E Brett, Gordon C Baird, Sarah E Kolbe, Arnold I Miller; Paleobiology6
- Late Bashkirian ammonoids from the Mospyne Formation of the Donets Basin, Ukraine5
Each of the 319 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. 101 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 content1

Picture of Phestia
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Phestia”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
Everything alive alongside itPhestiinae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Chernyshev 1951