Monophorus
Monophorus is a genus of minute sea snails with left-handed shell-coiling, marine gastropod mollusks or micromollusks in the family Triphoridae.

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
- TriphoridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Triphoridae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Triphoridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Triphoridae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
38 occurrences of Monophorus 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
38 occurrences- Oligocene3%
- Miocene11%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene84%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
13 formations
- Unnamed Formation5
- Quaternary terrace Formation4
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation4
- Timms Point Silt Formation3
- Pakaurangi Formation2
- Lomita Marl Formation2
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The named rock units Monophorus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Monophorus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Monophorus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,645 taxa- Californiconus californicus16 sites
- Callianax biplicata16 sites
- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata16 sites
- Amphissa versicolor14 sites
- Epilucina californica14 sites
- Glans carpenteri14 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus14 sites
- Atrimitra idae13 sites
- Crepipatella lingulata13 sites
- Lacuna (Epheria) unifasciata13 sites
- Alia carinata12 sites
- Fissurella volcano12 sites
- Lottia insessa12 sites
- Antisabia panamensis11 sites
- Caecum californicum11 sites
- Caesia perpinguis11 sites
- Crassadoma gigantea11 sites
- Dendropoma lituella11 sites
- Euspira lewisii11 sites
- Glycymeris septentrionalis11 sites
- Hiatella arctica11 sites
- Hipponix tumens11 sites
- Lottia scabra11 sites
- Mitrella tuberosa11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Monophorus, 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
22 references- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California5
- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California5
- Geology and Paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California3
- Additions to knowledge of the fossil invertebrate fauna of California3
- Late Pleistocene invertebrates of the Newport Bay area, California2
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico2
- The molluscan faunule at Pakaurangi Point, Kaipara - No. 12
- The west American mollusks of the genus Triphoris2
- Seagrass-Associated Molluscan and Fish Communities from the Early Pleistocene of the Island of Rhodes (Greece)1
- The marine fossils malacofauna in a Plio-Pleistocene section from Vallin Buio (Livorno, Italy)1
- Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement1
- The molluscan fauna of the late Oligocene Branden Clay, Denmark1
Each of the 38 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. 10 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 Monophorus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Delsing
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Monophorus was found in Sketchfab.
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, “Monophorus”
- 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 itTriphoridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Grillo 1877