Volutopsius
Volutopsius is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Buccinidae, the true whelks.

George Brettingham Sowerby II · Public Domain · 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
- VolutopsiinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Buccinidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Volutopsius on record. 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene40%
- Pleistocene40%
- Holocene20%
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
- Gubik Formation2
- Wildcat Formation1
- Rio Dell Formation · Wildcat Group1
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The named rock units Volutopsius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
90 taxa- Cryptonatica affinis2 sites
- Ranella (Priene) arnoldi2 sites
- Acharax ventricosa1 site
- Acipenser1 site
- Acirsa borealis1 site
- Antiplanes voyi1 site
- Astarte montagui1 site
- Aves1 site
- Axinopsida orbiculata1 site
- Balanus crenatus1 site
- Boreotrophon1 site
- Boreotrophon fleenerensis1 site
- Bryozoa indet.1 site
- Buccinum glaciale1 site
- Buccinum plectrum1 site
- Buccinum scalariforme1 site
- Buccinum strigillatum1 site
- Buccinum undatum1 site
- Caesia fossatus1 site
- Chicoreus (Phyllonotus) hippocastanum1 site
- Chione californiensis1 site
- Chirona1 site
- Chlamys (Chlamys) islandica1 site
- Clangula hyemalis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Volutopsius, 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
4 references- Cenozoic Megafossils of Northern Alaska2
- Brown bear (Ursus arctos) (9880 ± 35 BP) from late-glacial Champlain Sea deposits at Saint-Nicolas, Quebec, Canada, and the dispersal history of brown bears1
- Catalogue of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene Mollusca of California1
- Descriptions of new species of fossil Mollusca from the later marine Neocene of California1
Each of the 5 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 Volutopsius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- George Brettingham Sowerby II
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Volutopsius was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Volutopsius”
- 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 itVolutopsiinae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Mörch 1857