Retusa obtusa
Retusa obtusa, common name Arctic barrel-bubble, is a species of very small head-shield sea snail or bubble shell, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Retusidae.

H. Zell · 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
- RetusaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Retusidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Retusidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Retusidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
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.
11 occurrences of Retusa obtusa 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene82%
- Holocene18%
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
- Kap Kobenhavn Formation2
- Acredale Formation1
- Norwich Crag Formation · Crag Group1
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The named rock units Retusa obtusa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Retusa obtusa and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Retusa obtusa and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
51 taxa- Hiatella arctica2 sites
- Macoma (Macoma) calcarea2 sites
- Mya (Mya) truncata2 sites
- Portlandia arctica2 sites
- Abra1 site
- Abra alba1 site
- Aequipecten opercularis1 site
- Astarte1 site
- Astarte borealis1 site
- Balanus crenatus1 site
- Bathyarca glacialis1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
- Boreotrophon clathratus1 site
- Buccinum scalariforme1 site
- Calliostoma1 site
- Calyptraea chinensis1 site
- Cardium1 site
- Cerastoderma edule1 site
- Chiton1 site
- Clathrus1 site
- Divaricella1 site
- Donax vittatus1 site
- Ennucula tenuis1 site
- Ensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Retusa obtusa, 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
7 references- Stratigraphical notes on Macoma (Bivalvia) in the southern part of the North Sea Basin and some remarks on the arrival of Pacific species3
- Molluscan palaeontology of the Pliocene-Pleistocene Kap Kobenhavn Formation, North Greenland2
- Marine Molluscan Assemblages in the Early Pleistocene of Sidestrand, Bramerton and the Royal Society Borehole at Ludham, Norfolk2
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions1
- Palaeoenvironmental interpretation of Late Quaternary marine molluscan assemblages, Canadian Arctic achipelago1
- Late-glacial marine invertebrate macrofossilsfrom Point Lepreau, New Brunswick1
- Quaternary marine stratigraphy and geochronology in central West Greenland1
Each of the 11 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 Retusa obtusa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- H. Zell
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Retusa obtusa 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 itRetusa through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Montagu 1808)