Texigryphaea
Texigryphaea is an extinct genus of oyster belonging to the order Ostreida and family Gryphaeidae. It dates to the Albian to Cenomanian Ages of the Cretaceous period and is primarily found in Texas and the southern Western Interior of North America. However, specimens have been identified from northern Spain.

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- PycnodonteinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Gryphaeidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gryphaeidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Gryphaeidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Ostreida
Time the record covers
At least 12 million years on record.
The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 100.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 93.9 Mya.
17 occurrences of Texigryphaea on record, most of them in the Early 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
17 occurrencesThese 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
9 formations
- Aurora Limestone Formation8
- Tucumcari Formation2
- Alisitos Formation1
- Kiowa Formation1
- Mesilla Valley Shale Formation1
- Del Norte Formation1
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The named rock units Texigryphaea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Texigryphaea and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Texigryphaea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
129 taxa- Cymatoceras hilli8 sites
- Camptonectes virgatus6 sites
- Hemiaster6 sites
- Kingena6 sites
- Cardium5 sites
- Protocardia5 sites
- Cyprimeria4 sites
- Holectypus4 sites
- Pecten4 sites
- Aporrhais3 sites
- Lima wacoensis3 sites
- Plicatula3 sites
- Serpula3 sites
- Coelosmilia texana2 sites
- Echinoidea2 sites
- Exogyra2 sites
- Gastropoda2 sites
- Hemiaster calvini2 sites
- Lima2 sites
- Mariella (Plesioturrilites) brazoensis2 sites
- Neithea occidentalis2 sites
- Neithea texana2 sites
- Peilinia levicostata2 sites
- Pholadomya2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Texigryphaea, 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
8 references- Cretaceous invertebrates of the Aurora Limestone8
- Tethyan Albian corals, Cerro de Cristo Rey Uplift, Chihuahua and New Mexico2
- New bivalve taxa from the Tucumcari Formation (Cretaceous, Albian), New Mexico, and the biostratigraphic significance of the basal Tucumcari fauna2
- Some Albian (Cretaceous) asteroids (Echinodermata) from Texas and their paleobiological implications1
- Paleoecology and Paleontology of the Lower Cretaceous Kiowa Formation, Kansas1
- Middle Cretaceous gastropoda from Punta China, Baja California, Mexico1
- The Cretaceous and Tertiary of southern Texas and northern Mexico1
- The Mollusca of the Buda limestone, with an appendix on the corals of the Buda limestone, by Thomas Wayland Vaughan1
Each of the 17 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 Texigryphaea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James St. John
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- 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 itPycnodonteinae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.