Clionella
Clionella is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Clavatulidae.

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
- ClavatulidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Conoidea
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Conoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Conoidea
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
9 occurrences of Clionella 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
9 occurrences- Miocene44%
- Pliocene11%
- Pleistocene44%
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
4 formations
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The named rock units Clionella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Clionella and its relatives
MioceneWhere Clionella and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
179 taxa- Glycymeris2 sites
- Nassarius2 sites
- Nucella2 sites
- Solen2 sites
- Tellina2 sites
- Turritella (Torquesia) carinifera2 sites
- Vermetus2 sites
- Aequipecten1 site
- Afrocominella capensis1 site
- Afrozoila zietsmani1 site
- Amalda (Baryspira)1 site
- Amalda glandiformis1 site
- Amblychilepas scutellum1 site
- Amphistegina1 site
- Amusium1 site
- Anadara1 site
- Anadara (Sectiarca) inaequilateralis1 site
- Ancilla1 site
- Antigona granosa1 site
- Architectonica perspectiva1 site
- Argobuccinum pustulosum1 site
- Assiminea1 site
- Aulacomya atra1 site
- Balanus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Clionella, 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
6 references- Revised list of South African late Tertiary and Pleistocene marine Mollusca3
- A Miocene marine fauna from Zululand2
- A new fossil Cypraea (Gastropoda, Prosobranchia) from South Africa with notes on the Alexandria Formation1
- The Faunal Deposits of a Late Pleistocene Raised Beach at Milnerton, Cape Province, South Africa1
- The Miocene Mollusca from Quilon, Kerala (India)1
- Description of Mollusca from the post-Eocene Tertiary formation of north-western India: Cephalopoda, Opisthobranchiata, Siphonostomata1
Each of the 9 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 Clionella
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Clionella”
- 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 itClavatulidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1847)