Macoma
Searched as Macoma virginiana coensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Macoma as the accepted name.
Macoma is a large genus of saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Tellinidae, the tellins.

Jan Delsing · Public Domain · 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
- TellinidaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feederPBDB, for Tellinidae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Tellinidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Tellinidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 1.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Macoma 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
3 occurrences- Pliocene100%
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
1 formation
- Jackson Bluff Formation · Alum Bluff Group3
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The named rock units Macoma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Macoma and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Macoma and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
2,473 taxa- Cyclocardia29 sites
- Hiatella arctica28 sites
- Ostrea28 sites
- Turritella26 sites
- Anadara23 sites
- Diplodonta23 sites
- Mactromeris polynyma22 sites
- Tellina22 sites
- Lucinoma acutilineata21 sites
- Mytilus edulis18 sites
- Mactromeris eugenensis17 sites
- Mya (Mya) truncata16 sites
- Nassarius16 sites
- Solena (Eosolen) eugenensis16 sites
- Crepidula15 sites
- Lucinoma annulata15 sites
- Macrocallista15 sites
- Panopea15 sites
- Anomia14 sites
- Dosinia14 sites
- Pitar (Pitar) dalli14 sites
- Spisula14 sites
- Bruclarkia13 sites
- Clinocardium13 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 616 sites for Macoma, and this reads 240 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
1 referenceEach of the 3 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 content2
Picture of Macoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Delsing
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Macoma”
- 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 itTellinidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leach 1819)