Mesalia pumila

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- MesaliaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Mesalia
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Mesalia
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Mesalia
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 6.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 66 Mya and 59.24 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Mesalia pumila on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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- Paleocene100%
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
3 formations
- Clayton Formation · Midway Group5
- Porters Creek Formation · Midway Group1
- Kincaid Formation · Midway Group1
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The named rock units Mesalia pumila has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Mesalia pumila and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Mesalia pumila and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
56 taxa- Amusium (Propeamussium) alabamense1 site
- Arca1 site
- Atys1 site
- Balanophyllia1 site
- Cadulus1 site
- Calyptraphorus velatus1 site
- Charonia1 site
- Corbula1 site
- Crassatella1 site
- Cucullaea1 site
- Cylichna1 site
- Cypraea1 site
- Dentalium1 site
- Exilia pergracilis1 site
- Flabellum conoideum1 site
- Foraminifera1 site
- Fusus1 site
- Gilbertia estellensis1 site
- Glycymeris1 site
- Kapalmerella mortoni1 site
- Levifusus1 site
- Levifusus pagodiformis1 site
- Meretrix1 site
- Mesalia alabamiensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Mesalia pumila, 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
3 references- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene mollusca of the southern and eastern United States. Part 1. Pelecypoda, Amphineura, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda and Cephalopoda5
- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene Mollusks of the Southern and Eastern United States Part II. Gastropoda1
- New Eocene species from Alabama1
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 Mesalia pumila
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mesalia pumila 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMesalia through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gabb 1860)