Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum

Thomas Berger · CC BY-NC 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- Mesodesma (Ceronia)PBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Mactroidea
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Mactroidea
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Mactroidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene83%
- Holocene17%
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 Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
23 taxa- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa1 site
- Astarte crenata1 site
- Astarte undata1 site
- Buccinum undatum1 site
- Colus stimpsoni1 site
- Crassostrea virginica1 site
- Crenella glandula1 site
- Crepidula fornicata1 site
- Crepidula plana1 site
- Cyclocardia novangliae1 site
- Ensis directus1 site
- Eontia ponderosa1 site
- Ilyanassa obsoleta1 site
- Ilyanassa trivittata1 site
- Macoma (Macoma) balthica1 site
- Mercenaria campechiensis1 site
- Mya (Mya) truncata1 site
- Mytilus edulis1 site
- Neverita duplicatus1 site
- Panomya norvegica1 site
- Placopecten magellanicus1 site
- Spisula (Hemimactra) solidissima1 site
- Urosalpinx cinerea1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America5
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions1
Each of the 6 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 Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Thomas Berger
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan of Mesodesma (Ceronia) arctatum 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 itMesodesma (Ceronia) through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Conrad 1831)