Melapium

Lamarck, 1822 · CC0 · 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
- StrepturidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Buccinidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Buccinidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 5.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Melapium on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
7 occurrences- Pliocene71%
- Pleistocene29%
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
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The named rock units Melapium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Melapium and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Melapium and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
68 taxa- Afrozoila zietsmani3 sites
- Calyptraea kilburni3 sites
- Diodora3 sites
- Dentalium2 sites
- Fissurellidea aperta2 sites
- Glycymeris2 sites
- Hespererato oppenheimeri2 sites
- Isognomon gariesensis2 sites
- Marginella2 sites
- Nassarius2 sites
- Nucella praecingulata2 sites
- Striostrea margaritacea2 sites
- Turbo2 sites
- Arca1 site
- Arca noae1 site
- Argobuccinum casus1 site
- Barbatia (Barbatia) obliquata1 site
- Barnea truncata1 site
- Bolma1 site
- Buccinum digitale1 site
- Bullia annulata1 site
- Calyptraea1 site
- Cardita unica1 site
- Carditella1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Melapium, 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
4 references- A new fossil Cypraea (Gastropoda, Prosobranchia) from South Africa with notes on the Alexandria Formation3
- Late Tertiary and Early Quaternary Fossil Mollusca for the Hondeklip Area, Cape Province, South Africa2
- The Tertiary limestone of the southern coastal regions of Cape Province, South Africa1
- Revised list of South African late Tertiary and Pleistocene marine Mollusca1
Each of the 7 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 Melapium
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Lamarck, 1822
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itStrepturidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Adams and A 1853