Limacidae
Limacidae, also known by their common name the keelback slugs, are a taxonomic family of medium-sized to very large, air-breathing land slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the superfamily Limacoidea.

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- LimacoideaPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 20 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
51 occurrences of Limacidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
51 occurrences- Miocene86%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistocene14%
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
- facies à Congeria Formation10
- Lower Freshwater Molasse Formation4
- Sajovolgyi Formation2
- Edelény Formation2
- Afyon Formation1
- Lefkon Formation1
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The named rock units Limacidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 29 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Limacidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Limacidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
919 taxa- Limax30 sites
- Prolagus13 sites
- Agriolimacidae12 sites
- Lacerta12 sites
- Ophisaurus12 sites
- Nordsieckia pontica11 sites
- Parmacella11 sites
- Cepaea10 sites
- Chiroptera10 sites
- Cochlostoma esuanum10 sites
- Glis minor10 sites
- Limax fossilis10 sites
- Melanopsis narzolina10 sites
- Milacidae10 sites
- Saccoia globosa10 sites
- Saccoia oryza10 sites
- Talpa10 sites
- Truciella ballesioi10 sites
- Colubrinae9 sites
- Craspedopoma conoidale9 sites
- Gyraulus9 sites
- Helicodiscus roemeri9 sites
- Lucilla miocaenica9 sites
- Melanoides curvicosta9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Limacidae, 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
27 references- Late Messinian continental and Lago-Mare gastropods from the Tertiary Piedmont Basin, NW Italy8
- Neue Ergebnisse zur Stratigraphie der mittleren Serie der Oberen Süßwassermolasse Bayerns (New results on the stratigraphy of the middle series of upper Freshwater Molasse, Bavaria)5
- A new Late Agenian (MN2a, Early Miocene) fossil assemblage from Wallenried (Molasse Basin, Canton Fribourg, Switzerland)4
- Synopsis of the Late Miocene mollusc fauna of the classical sections Richardhof and Eichkogel in the Vienna Basin (Austria, Pannonian, MN 9-MN11)4
- Donnees nouvelles sur les microfaunes malacologiques et sur les rongeurs du Pleistocene continental de la Basse-Seine3
- Late Messinian mollusks and vertebrates from Moncucco Torinese, north-western Italy. Paleoecological and paleoclimatological implications2
- Vertebrate microfossils from the Upper Freshwater Molasse in the Swiss Molasse Basin: Implications for the evolution of the North Alpine Foreland Basin during the Miocene Climate Optimum2
- The fossil pulmonate snails of Sandelzhausen (Early/Middle Miocene, Germany) (Hygrophila, Punctoidea and limacoids)2
- Recent Advances on Multidisciplinary Research at Rudabánya, Late Miocene (MN9), Hungary: a compendium2
- Középs & #337;-miocén & #337;smaradványok, a Mátrasz & #337;l & #337;s , Rákóczi-kápolna alatti útbevágásból. I. A Mátrasz & #337;l & #337;s 1. lel & #337;hely [Middle miocene fossils from the road cut below the Rákóczi chapel at Mátrasz & #337;l & #337;s. I. The site Mátrasz & #337;l & #337;s 1]2
- Early Miocene gastropod and ectothermic vertebrate remains from the Lesvos Petrified Forest (Greece)1
- Biostratigraphy of Middle Miocene (Sarmatian) wetland systems in an Eastern Alpine intramontane basin (Gratkorn Basin, Austria): the terrestrial gastropod approach1
Each of the 51 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. 15 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 content1
Picture of Limacidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Limacidae 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, “Limacidae”
- 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 itLimacoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1801