Discotectonica
Discotectonica is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Architectonicidae, the staircase shells or sundials.

Credit:2017 - Manuel CABALLER Project:RECOLNAT · 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
- ArchitectonicidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Architectonicidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Architectonicidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Architectonicidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 58 million years on record.
The record covers at least 61.66 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 2.58 Mya.
6 occurrences of Discotectonica on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
6 occurrencesThese 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
- Te Waharau Formation1
- Dry Creek Sands Formation1
- Navidad Formation1
- Monte Giogo Formation1
- Kincaid Formation · Midway Group1
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The named rock units Discotectonica has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Discotectonica and its relatives
MioceneWhere Discotectonica and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
635 taxa- Dentalium4 sites
- Turritella4 sites
- Capulus3 sites
- Glycymeris3 sites
- Mitrella3 sites
- Natica3 sites
- Nuculana3 sites
- Turricula3 sites
- Volvulella3 sites
- Acirsa2 sites
- Acteon2 sites
- Anomia2 sites
- Bittium2 sites
- Cadulus2 sites
- Calliostoma2 sites
- Caryocorbula2 sites
- Conus2 sites
- Cuspidaria2 sites
- Epitonium (Scala)2 sites
- Ficus2 sites
- Gemmula2 sites
- Limopsis2 sites
- Nucula2 sites
- Ostrea2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Discotectonica, 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- Resilience of marine invertebrate communities during the early Cenozoic hyperthermals1
- Nuove specie di Gasteropodi del Piacenziano di rio Crevalese, Castell’Arquato (Piacenza, Italia)1
- Geologie, Paläontologie und Palökologie der südostbayerischen unter-priabonen (Ober-Eozän) Riffkalkvorkommen bei Hallthurm (Nördliche Kalkalpen) und der Kirchbergs bei Neubeuern (Helvetikum)1
- Cenozoic Mollusca of New Zealand1
- El genero Cancellaria en el Mioceno de Chile con descripcion de cuatro especies nuevas (Gaastropoda: Cancellariidae)1
- The molluscan fauna of the Pliocene strata underlying the Adelaide Plains. Part IV - Gastropoda (Turritellidae-Struthiolariidae)1
Each of the 6 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 Discotectonica
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Credit:2017 - Manuel CABALLER Project:RECOLNAT
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Discotectonica 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
- 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 itArchitectonicidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Marwick 1931)