Tenuipteria

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
- InoceramidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
55 occurrences of Tenuipteria on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
55 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
13 formations
- Owl Creek Formation10
- Pierre Shale Formation · Montana Group5
- Prairie Bluff Formation3
- opoka Formation3
- Eastend Formation3
- Chiwapa Formation2
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The named rock units Tenuipteria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tenuipteria and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Tenuipteria and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
735 taxa- Granocardium24 sites
- Nuculana24 sites
- Syncyclonema23 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata22 sites
- Idonearca capax21 sites
- Cyprimeria20 sites
- Legumen ellipticum20 sites
- Linearis20 sites
- Tenea20 sites
- Veniella conradi20 sites
- Crassatella vadosa19 sites
- Liopistha protexta19 sites
- Camptonectes bubonis18 sites
- Lima acutilineata18 sites
- Nucula percrassa18 sites
- Crenella elegantula17 sites
- Aenona eufaulensis16 sites
- Anomia argentaria16 sites
- Cymbophora16 sites
- Aphrodina15 sites
- Crenella serica15 sites
- Panopea15 sites
- Pinna laqueata15 sites
- Cubitostrea tecticosta14 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 51 sites for Tenuipteria, 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
14 references- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages17
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain10
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrate Fossils from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the west gulf Coastal Plain5
- The Red Bird Section of the Upper Cretaceous Pierre Shale in Wyoming5
- Maastrichtian non-cephalopod mollusks: Scaphopoda, Gastropoda and Bivalvia of the Middle Vistula Valley, central Poland4
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrates from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the Atlantic Coastal Plain with further data for the East Gulf3
- Geology of the Southern Alberta Plains. Part II. Paleontology of the marine formations of the Montana Group3
- Scaphitid ammonites of the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Fox Hills Formation in South Dakota and Wyoming2
- Ammonite dating of latest Cretaceous mosasaurid reptiles (Squamata, Mosasauroidea) from Jordan-preliminary observations1
- The first reported ceratopsid dinosaur from eastern North America (Owl Creek Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mississippi, USA)1
- Type specimens of Maastrichtian fossils in the National Museum of Natural History, Leiden1
- Lower Danian bivalves, Stevns Klint, Denmark; continuity across the K/T boundary1
Each of the 55 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. 2 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 Tenuipteria
- 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itInoceramidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stephenson 1955