Alaba incerta
Alaba incerta is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Litiopidae.

Jan Delsing · 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
- AlabaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Litiopidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Litiopidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Litiopidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
7 occurrences of Alaba incerta on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
7 occurrences- Pliocene57%
- Pleistocene29%
- Holocene14%
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
5 formations
- Mare Formation3
- Playa Grande Formation · Cabo Blanco Group1
- Abisinia Formation1
- Mount Hope Formation1
- Boca Chica Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Alaba incerta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Alaba incerta and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Alaba incerta and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
119 taxa- Abra aequalis1 site
- Acar domingensis1 site
- Acteocina bidentata1 site
- Acteocina canaliculata1 site
- Adrana newcombi1 site
- Agaricia agaricites1 site
- Americardia media1 site
- Anadara (Cunearca) pittieri1 site
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa1 site
- Anadara notabilis1 site
- Angulus merus1 site
- Angulus versicolor1 site
- Anodontia alba1 site
- Arcopagia fausta1 site
- Arcopsis adamsi1 site
- Argopecten gibbus1 site
- Astralium1 site
- Atilia1 site
- Atys1 site
- Bailya intricata1 site
- Balanus eburneus1 site
- Barbatia1 site
- Bittiolum varium1 site
- Brachidontes exustus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Alaba incerta, 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
3 references- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of Jack and Winifred Gibson-Smith, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel4
- Late Cenozoic gastropods from northern Venezuela2
- Two collections of Pleistocene fossils from the Isthmus of Panama1
Each of the 7 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Alaba incerta
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Delsing
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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 itAlaba through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (d'Orbigny 1842)