Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus

Takaaki Hattori · CC BY 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- LithoconusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Conidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Conidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Conidae
- 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.
21 occurrences of Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
21 occurrences- Miocene56%
- Pliocene15%
- Pleistocene29%
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
8 formations
- Jaffna Limestone Formation4
- Shinzato Formation · Shimajiri Group2
- Shimajiri Formation2
- Yonabaru Formation · Shimajiri Group1
- Ryukyu Limestone Formation · Sakishima Group1
- Bredasdorp Formation1
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The named rock units Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
276 taxa- Amalda (Baryspira)4 sites
- Spondylus4 sites
- Trachycardium4 sites
- Amusium3 sites
- Chlamys3 sites
- Peristernia3 sites
- Ancilla (Turrancilla)2 sites
- Antigona puerpera granosa2 sites
- Bathybembix2 sites
- Callistocypraea (Miolyncina) prunum2 sites
- Cancellaria2 sites
- Chicoreus2 sites
- Clypeaster2 sites
- Cominella (Cominella)2 sites
- Coralliophila2 sites
- Cymatium2 sites
- Fasciolaria2 sites
- Gemmula2 sites
- Glycymeris2 sites
- Hyotissa virleti2 sites
- Jolonica macneili2 sites
- Lucina2 sites
- Luria (Basilitrona) jenkinsi2 sites
- Macrocallista (Costacallista) pseudoumbonella2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus, 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
10 references- Tertiary and Quaternary Gastropoda of Okinawa: A comparison of the late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene Gastropoda of Okinawa with related faunas of East Asia together with a resume of the geological setting of the fossiliferous deposits5
- On the ages of certain Upper Tertiary beds of Peninsula India and Ceylon5
- Cooray, 19843
- Late Pleistocene molluscan assemblages from the coral reefs of the Kenya coast2
- Pleistocene mollusc assemblage in the slightly raised atoll lagoon of Niau (Tuamotu, French Polynesia)1
- A new species of Hartungia (Gastropoda: Janthinidae) from late Miocene of Japan1
- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Volutidae through Terebridae)1
- The Tertiary limestone of the southern coastal regions of Cape Province, South Africa1
- Geology of Ishigaki-shima Ryukyu-retto1
- A Miocene marine fauna from Zululand1
Each of the 21 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 Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Takaaki Hattori
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Conus (Lithoconus) litteratus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLithoconus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)