Donax

Debivort · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- DonacidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 201 million years on record.
The record covers at least 201.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 205.7 Mya to 0 Mya.
364 occurrences of Donax 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
364 occurrences- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene3%
- Oligocene4%
- Miocene20%
- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene52%
- Holocene4%
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
92 formations
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation25
- Waccamaw Formation13
- Talparo Formation10
- Pamlico Formation10
- Morne l'Enfer Formation9
- Shoal River Formation · Alum Bluff Group7
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The named rock units Donax has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 68 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 131 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Donax and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Donax and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
4,506 taxa- Tellina20 sites
- Turritella19 sites
- Abra aequalis18 sites
- Anadara17 sites
- Ervilia17 sites
- Caesia fossatus15 sites
- Callianax biplicata15 sites
- Crassinella15 sites
- Dentalium neohexagonum15 sites
- Leptopecten latiauratus15 sites
- Plicatula gibbosa15 sites
- Caesia perpinguis14 sites
- Crassinella lunulata14 sites
- Crepidula14 sites
- Cryptomya californica14 sites
- Epilucina californica14 sites
- Fissurella volcano14 sites
- Glossaulax reclusiana14 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata14 sites
- Lucinisca nuttalli14 sites
- Pitar14 sites
- Semele14 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus14 sites
- Tivela (Pachydesma) stultorum14 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 206 sites for Donax, and this reads all 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
130 references- Miocene and Pliocene mollusks from Trinidad18
- Mollusca from the Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Virginia and North Carolina. Part 1. Pelecypoda18
- Revised list of South African late Tertiary and Pleistocene marine Mollusca16
- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America14
- The paleontology of the Pleistocene molluscan fauna of the Newport Bay area, California12
- Neogene molluscs, shallow marine paleoenvironments, and chronostratigraphy of the Guajira Peninsula, Colombia11
- Paleoecologic analysis and age of a late Pleistocene fossil assemblage from Upper Newport Bay, Newport Beach, Orange County, California11
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions9
- The Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene of San Pedro, California9
- Recherches sur le Neogene et le Quaternaire marins de la cote Atlantique du Maroc8
- Stratigraphical notes on Macoma (Bivalvia) in the southern part of the North Sea Basin and some remarks on the arrival of Pacific species7
- Lower Oligocene Bivalvia of the Vicksburg Group in Mississippi7
Each of the 364 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. 118 further references are not listed. 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 content2

Picture of Donax
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Debivort
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itDonacidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758