Cidarina cidaris
Cidarina cidaris, common name Adam's spiny margarite, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Calliotropidae.

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
- CidarinaPBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Seguenzioidea
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Seguenzioidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Seguenzioidea
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka.
13 occurrences of Cidarina cidaris 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
13 occurrences- Pliocene4%
- Pleistocene96%
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
- Timms Point Silt Formation6
- Careaga Sandstone Formation2
- Elk River Formation1
- Lomita Marl Formation1
- Niguel Formation1
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The named rock units Cidarina cidaris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cidarina cidaris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cidarina cidaris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
181 taxa- Boreotrophon multicostatus3 sites
- Conchocele bisecta3 sites
- Crockerella conradiana3 sites
- Acmaea funiculata2 sites
- Barbarofusus barbarensis2 sites
- Boreotrophon stuarti2 sites
- Caesia californiana2 sites
- Californiconus californicus2 sites
- Chlorostoma montereyi2 sites
- Coanicardita ventricosa2 sites
- Cryptonatica affinis2 sites
- Decollidrillia strongi2 sites
- Elaeocyma empyrosia2 sites
- Exilioidea rectirostris2 sites
- Fusitriton oregonensis2 sites
- Jaton carpenteri2 sites
- Lucinoma annulata2 sites
- Minolia peramabilis2 sites
- Mitrella gausapata2 sites
- Neptunea (Sulcosipho) tabulata2 sites
- Propebela fidicula2 sites
- Rhodopetoma renaudi2 sites
- Saccella taphria2 sites
- Spirotropis (Antiplanes) perversa2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Cidarina cidaris, 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
8 references- The cool-water Timms Point Pleistocene horizon at San Pedro, California5
- Geology and paleontology of the Santa Maria District California2
- A review of the Quaternary Mollusca of the Palos Verdes Peninsula1
- A Late Pliocene macrofossil fauna of Newport Beach, Orange County, California1
- Geology and Paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California1
- The marine Tertiary stratigraphy of the North Pacific coast of America1
- The Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene of San Pedro, California1
- Catalogue of Californian fossils. (Parts II, III, IV, and V)1
Each of the 13 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. 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 Cidarina cidaris
- 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
- 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 itCidarina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Adams 1864)