Harpa crenata
Harpa crenata, common name the Panama harp, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Harpidae, the harp snails.

Naturalis Biodiversity Center · CC0 · 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
- HarpaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Harpidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Harpidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Harpidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 774 ka.
5 occurrences of Harpa crenata 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene80%
- Pleistocene20%
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
4 formations
- Onzole Formation2
- Esmeraldas Formation1
- Araya Formation · Cubagua Group1
- Armuelles Formation · Charco Azul Group1
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The named rock units Harpa crenata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Harpa crenata and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Harpa crenata and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
83 taxa- Acesta1 site
- Aforia ecuadoriana1 site
- Agladrillia1 site
- Anachis (Alia)1 site
- Anachis (Anachis)1 site
- Anadara (Sectiarca) henekeni1 site
- Ancistrosyrinx cedonulli reevi1 site
- Antillophos1 site
- Arca (Arca) suspecta1 site
- Argopecten woodringi1 site
- Axelella thisbe1 site
- Bathybembix dalliana1 site
- Buridrillia1 site
- Calliostoma1 site
- Calliostoma tegulum1 site
- Callucina1 site
- Cancellaria (Cancellaria) esmeralda1 site
- Cancellaria (Euclia) serrata1 site
- Cantharus1 site
- Capulus1 site
- Cirsotrema togatum1 site
- Compsodrillia1 site
- Conus1 site
- Conus cacuminatus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Harpa crenata, 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
2 references- Early Pliocene gastropods of Cubagua, Venezuela: Taxonomy, palaeobiogeography and ecostratigraphy3
- The genus Harpa (Mollusca: Gastropoda) in the new world2
Each of the 5 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 content1
Picture of Harpa crenata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Naturalis Biodiversity Center
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Harpa crenata was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itHarpa through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Swainson 1822