Saxidomus giganteus

Cody Logan (aka clpo13 ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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- Also called
- smooth Washington clamPBDB
- Sits inside
- SaxidomusPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Veneridae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Veneridae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Veneridae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Saxidomus giganteus 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- Pleistocene100%
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
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The named rock units Saxidomus giganteus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Saxidomus giganteus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Saxidomus giganteus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
151 taxa- Macoma nasuta4 sites
- Leukoma staminea3 sites
- Balanus2 sites
- Caesia fossatus2 sites
- Callianax biplicata2 sites
- Callithaca tenerrima2 sites
- Clinocardium (Clinocardium) nuttallii2 sites
- Crepipatella lingulata2 sites
- Cryptomya californica2 sites
- Hiatella arctica2 sites
- Lirularia lirulata2 sites
- Macoma (Macoma) inquinata2 sites
- Macoma (Macoma) obliqua2 sites
- Odostomia2 sites
- Tresus capax2 sites
- Tresus nuttallii2 sites
- Abies1 site
- Acteocina culcitella1 site
- Alia carinata1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Ameritella carpenteri1 site
- Ameritella modesta1 site
- Amphissa columbiana1 site
- Anomalocardia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Saxidomus giganteus, 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- Late Pleistocene marine paleoecology and zoogeography on Central California4
- Age Estimates and Uplift Rates for Late Pleistocene Marine Terraces: Southern Oregon Portion of the Cascadia Forearc2
- A late Pleistocene Stellar sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) from Courtenay, British Columbia: its death, associated biota, and paleoenvironment1
- Late Pleistocene marine fauna, Goleta, California1
- Interpretation of the invertebrate fauna from the Upper Pleistocene Battery Formation near Crescent City, California1
- A Pleistocene molluscan fauna from near Goleta, Santa Barbara County, California1
- The marine Tertiary stratigraphy of the North Pacific coast of America1
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 content2

Picture of Saxidomus giganteus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Cody Logan (aka clpo13 )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- RosarioBeachMarineLab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itSaxidomus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Deshayes 1839)