Alia
Alia is a genus of small sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Columbellidae, the dove snails.

Manuel CABALLER · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- dovesnailPBDB
- Sits inside
- ColumbellidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Columbellidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Columbellidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Columbellidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 125 million years on record.
The record covers at least 125.77 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 132.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
93 occurrences of Alia on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
93 occurrences- Early Cretaceous1%
- Miocene9%
- Pliocene11%
- Pleistocene79%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
17 formations
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation11
- Unnamed Formation9
- San Pedro Sand Formation5
- Pico Formation3
- Esmeraldas Formation2
- Termofourà Formation2
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The named rock units Alia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 49 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Alia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Alia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,696 taxa- Callianax biplicata26 sites
- Californiconus californicus22 sites
- Epilucina californica22 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus21 sites
- Nutricola tantilla20 sites
- Lacuna (Epheria) unifasciata19 sites
- Lottia insessa19 sites
- Amphissa versicolor18 sites
- Caesia perpinguis18 sites
- Chlorostoma funebrale18 sites
- Crepidula adunca18 sites
- Diodora aspera18 sites
- Mitrella tuberosa18 sites
- Antisabia panamensis17 sites
- Cumingia californica17 sites
- Homalopoma (Homalopoma) luridum17 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata17 sites
- Lottia scabra17 sites
- Crepidula nummaria16 sites
- Glans carpenteri16 sites
- Hipponix tumens16 sites
- Caecum californicum15 sites
- Crepidula onyx15 sites
- Hima mendica15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 76 sites for Alia, 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
41 references- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California9
- The paleontology of the Pleistocene molluscan fauna of the Newport Bay area, California8
- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California5
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico5
- Marine und brachyhaline Gastropoden aus dem Karpatium des Korneubuger Beckens und der Kreuzstettener Bucht (Österreich, Untermiozän)4
- Late Pleistocene megafauna of Cayucos, California, and its zoogeographic significance4
- Geology and Paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California4
- Die Mollusken des Pliozäns von Boemiajoe (Java)4
- The Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene of San Pedro, California4
- Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement3
- Notes on the marine Pleistocene deposits of San Diego County, California3
- On the reconciliation of biostratigraphy and strontium isotope stratigraphy of three southern Californian Plio-Pleistocene formations2
Each of the 93 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. 29 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 Alia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Manuel CABALLER
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alia was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itColumbellidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Adams and Adams 1853)