Conus
Searched as Conus (Leptoconus) jaspideus caboblanquensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Conus as the accepted name.
Conus is a genus of venomous and predatory cone snails. Prior to 2009, it included all cone snail species but is now more precisely defined.

Almed2 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- ConidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Conidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Conidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Conidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 1.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 3.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Conus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
4 occurrences- Pliocene100%
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
2 formations
- Mare Formation · Cabo Blanco Group3
- Playa Grande Formation · Cabo Blanco Group1
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The named rock units Conus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Conus and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Conus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
3,951 taxa- Turritella56 sites
- Chlamys46 sites
- Ostrea45 sites
- Dentalium36 sites
- Architectonica34 sites
- Anadara30 sites
- Ficus26 sites
- Terebra26 sites
- Corbula24 sites
- Glycymeris24 sites
- Polinices24 sites
- Cadulus23 sites
- Sinum23 sites
- Cancellaria21 sites
- Fusinus21 sites
- Tellina21 sites
- Venericardia21 sites
- Pitar20 sites
- Clavilithes19 sites
- Microdrillia19 sites
- Nucula19 sites
- Nuculana19 sites
- Strombus19 sites
- Trachycardium19 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 793 sites for Conus, 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
1 referenceEach of the 4 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Conus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Almed2
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D scan
- Source
- Smithsonian
- Licence
- CC0 — this site’s default, not the record’s
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
- Specimen
- Conus gloriamaris
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
MorphoSource 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, “Conus”
- 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 itConidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758