Abra
Searched as Abra aequalis deltoidea. The Paleobiology Database treats Abra as the accepted name.
Abra is a genus of saltwater clams, marine bivalve mollusks in the family Semelidae. Members of this genus are mostly under 1.5 centimeters long, and have thin shells which are usually white. These bivalves normally live under the surface of sandy and muddy sediments, in the neritic zone.
Jan Johan ter Poorten · 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- Also called
- abraPBDB
- Sits inside
- SemelidaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 2.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 774 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Abra on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
2 occurrences- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Abra has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Abra and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Abra and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
2,705 taxa- Turritella49 sites
- Varicorbula gibba39 sites
- Naticidae38 sites
- Parvicardium36 sites
- Odostomia31 sites
- Cyclocardia29 sites
- Cadulus28 sites
- Mitrella28 sites
- Gastropoda27 sites
- Euspira26 sites
- Nassarius26 sites
- Elphidium25 sites
- Limopsis25 sites
- Yoldia (Yoldia) glaberrima25 sites
- Aporrhais (Aporrhais)24 sites
- Astarte (Astarte) radiata24 sites
- Dentalina24 sites
- Lentigodentalium24 sites
- Limopsis (Limopsis) aurita24 sites
- Lunulites24 sites
- Reussirella24 sites
- Saccella westendorpi24 sites
- Spiroplectammina carinata24 sites
- Venus (Ventricoloidea) multilamella24 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 236 sites for Abra, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Abra
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Johan ter Poorten
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Abra 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 itSemelidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1818