Cymatiidae
Cymatiidae is a family of large sea snails in the superfamily Tonnoidea and the order Littorinimorpha. Members of this family are predators.

Lardeur A. · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- TonnoideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 61 million years on record.
The record covers at least 61.66 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 11.7 ka.
8 occurrences of Cymatiidae 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
8 occurrences- Paleocene13%
- Eocene13%
- Miocene13%
- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene38%
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
- Ormara & Jiwani Formation2
- Agatdal Formation1
- Talar Formation1
- Waikareka Volcanic Formation · Alma Group1
- Bowden Formation · Coastal Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Cymatiidae 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.
Cymatiidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cymatiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
301 taxa- Anadara3 sites
- Anadara (Anadara) antiquata3 sites
- Anomia3 sites
- Architectonica3 sites
- Chlamys3 sites
- Crassostrea3 sites
- Dosinia3 sites
- Glossaulax didyma3 sites
- Natica3 sites
- Paphia3 sites
- Pecten nearchi3 sites
- Pitar3 sites
- Raeta3 sites
- Tellinidae3 sites
- Timoclea3 sites
- Turridae3 sites
- Turritella3 sites
- Anadara (Cunearca) ferruginea2 sites
- Anadara (Scapharca) inaequivalvis2 sites
- Anadara (Scapharca) vellicata2 sites
- Anadara (Tegillarca) granosa2 sites
- Anadara uropigimelana2 sites
- Architectonica perspectiva2 sites
- Calliostoma2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Cymatiidae, 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- Neogene and Quaternary Mollusca from the Makran Coast, Pakistan3
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions1
- The paleoenvironment of an early Middle Miocene Paratethys sequence in NE Austria with special emphasis on mollusks and foraminifera1
- Late Pleistocene molluscan assemblages from the coral reefs of the Kenya coast1
- Paleocene gastropods from Nûgssuaq, West Greenland1
- The Geology of the Waitaki Subdivision1
Each of the 8 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 Cymatiidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Lardeur A.
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cymatiidae 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cymatiidae”
- 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 itTonnoidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Iredale 1913