Cerithiidae
Cerithiidae, common name the cerithiids or ceriths, is a large family of medium-sized marine gastropods in the clade Sorbeoconcha.

P. Harting (scan by Tom Meijer) · 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- Also called
- cerith snailPBDB
- Sits inside
- CerithioideaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 227 million years on record.
The record covers at least 227.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 0 Mya.
2,905 occurrences of Cerithiidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2,905 occurrences- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassic2%
- Early Cretaceous2%
- Late Cretaceous6%
- Paleocene4%
- Eocene18%
- Oligocene7%
- Miocene31%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene17%
- Holocene2%
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
433 formations
- Gurabo Formation154
- Chipola Formation · Alum Bluff Group143
- Woodbine Formation73
- Cercado Formation71
- Gatun Formation34
- Kincaid Formation · Midway Group33
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The named rock units Cerithiidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 409 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 862 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cerithiidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cerithiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
3,351 taxa- Turritella50 sites
- Bittium48 sites
- Cerithium45 sites
- Corbula42 sites
- Dentalium40 sites
- Voysa36 sites
- Glycymeris34 sites
- Nuculana34 sites
- Caryocorbula32 sites
- Ostrea29 sites
- Brachidontes28 sites
- Anomia26 sites
- Cucullaea26 sites
- Sanoarca grandis26 sites
- Calyptraea24 sites
- Cymbophora24 sites
- Crassatella23 sites
- Cuspidaria23 sites
- Tellina23 sites
- Cylichna22 sites
- Natica22 sites
- Odostomia22 sites
- Serpula22 sites
- Tornatellaea22 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,158 sites for Cerithiidae, and this reads 240 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
507 references- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel222
- Cerithiidae and Potamididae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) from the Chipola Formation of northwestern Florida142
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions77
- Larger invertebrate fossils of the Woodbine formation (Cenomanian) of Texas75
- Die Fauna des marinen Miozäns von Kevelaer (Niederrhein)63
- Skwarko, 199460
- Biostratigraphie et paleoecologie des gisements types du Stampian de la region d''Etampes (Essonne)52
- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Turritellidae through Strombidae)51
- Depositional dynamics and the record of ecosystem stability: early Eocene faunal gradients in the Pyrenean foreland, Spain49
- Resilience of marine invertebrate communities during the early Cenozoic hyperthermals47
- Les Mesogastropoda Fossiles du Cenozoïque étranger des Collections de L'Institute Royale des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique: Cyclophoridae à Stilifetidae42
- A paleobiotic survey of Caribbean faunas from the Neogene of the Isthmus of Panama41
Each of the 2,905 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. 495 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 content2
Picture of Cerithiidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- P. Harting (scan by Tom Meijer)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cerithiidae”
- 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 itCerithioidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fleming 1822