Cardiola
Cardiola is an extinct genus of saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs that lived from the Silurian to the Middle Devonian in Africa, Europe, and North America.

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- CardiolidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Pteriomorphia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 74 million years on record.
The record covers at least 432.9 Mya to 358.86 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 443.1 Mya to 342.9 Mya.
136 occurrences of Cardiola on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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
136 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
21 formations
- Kopanina Formation26
- Fluminimaggiore Formation9
- Overton Formation5
- Cardiola Formation5
- Elton Beds Formation4
- Rusne Formation · Varmia Group4
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The named rock units Cardiola has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 62 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cardiola and its relatives
SilurianWhere Cardiola and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
722 taxa- Orthoceras25 sites
- Dualina23 sites
- Monograptus22 sites
- Bivalvia21 sites
- Spanila21 sites
- Cephalopoda18 sites
- Gastropoda16 sites
- Butovicella migrans14 sites
- Bohemograptus bohemicus13 sites
- Graptolithina12 sites
- Mila12 sites
- Patrocardia12 sites
- Crinoidea11 sites
- Slava11 sites
- Craniops10 sites
- Lunulacardium10 sites
- Nautiloidea10 sites
- Septatrypa10 sites
- Butovicella9 sites
- Maminka9 sites
- Pristiograptus9 sites
- Pristiograptus dubius9 sites
- Isorthis8 sites
- Lingula8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 95 sites for Cardiola, 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
31 references- Correlation of the African Silurian rocks26
- Bivalvia communities of Bohemian type from the Silurian and Lower Devonian carbonate facies21
- Silurian field excursions: Prague Basin (Barrandian), Bohemia21
- Upper Silurian and lowermost Devonian Bivalvia of Bohemian type from south-western Sardinia8
- Silurian and lowermost Devonian bivalves of Bohemian type from the Carnic Alps7
- New data on the stratigraphy and correlation of the South - East Baltic Wenlockian and Ludlovian (Silurian)6
- Faunas from the Upper Silurian (Upper Ludlovian) in the Ludlow-Much Wenlock District, England5
- Benthic community organization in the Ludlow Series of the Welsh Borderland5
- Silurian and Lochkovian communities in the Prague basin (Barrandian area, Czech Republic)4
- Carnic Alps4
- A new bivalve community from the lower Ludlow of the Prague Basin (Perunica, Bohemia)3
- Wenlockian to Emsian communities of the Carnic Alps (Austria and Italy)3
Each of the 136 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. 19 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 Cardiola
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cardiola”
- 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 itCardiolidae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Broderip 1839