Mopalia
Mopalia is a genus of chitons in the family Mopaliidae.

Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington · 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
- MopaliidaePBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Motility
- facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Polyplacophora
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Polyplacophora
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
74 occurrences of Mopalia 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
74 occurrences- Pleistocene99%
- Holocene1%
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
8 formations
- Unnamed Formation13
- Quaternary terrace Formation6
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation6
- San Pedro Sand Formation3
- Hookton Formation2
- Timms Point Silt Formation2
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The named rock units Mopalia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 40 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mopalia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Mopalia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,026 taxa- Littorina (Littorina) scutulata25 sites
- Callianax biplicata24 sites
- Diodora aspera23 sites
- Epilucina californica23 sites
- Thylacodes squamigerus23 sites
- Leukoma staminea21 sites
- Homalopoma (Homalopoma) luridum20 sites
- Lacuna (Epheria) unifasciata20 sites
- Alia carinata19 sites
- Amphissa versicolor19 sites
- Californiconus californicus19 sites
- Chlorostoma funebrale19 sites
- Fissurella volcano19 sites
- Glans carpenteri19 sites
- Lottia scabra19 sites
- Mytilus californianus19 sites
- Nutricola tantilla19 sites
- Acmaea mitra18 sites
- Antisabia panamensis18 sites
- Cumingia californica18 sites
- Eulithidium pulloides18 sites
- Lottia insessa18 sites
- Atrimitra idae17 sites
- Crepidula onyx17 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 34 sites for Mopalia, 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
18 references- Fossil chitons of Western North America19
- Geology of San Nicolas Island, California13
- Late Pleistocene molluscan faunas from upper terraces of the Palos Verdes Hills, California8
- Late Pleistocene faunas from the northwestern coast of Baja California, Mexico6
- A review of the Quaternary Mollusca of the Palos Verdes Peninsula3
- Late Pleistocene invertebrates of the Newport Bay area, California3
- Late Pleistocene megafauna of Cayucos, California, and its zoogeographic significance3
- Report on Pleistocene Molluscan Fauna at Capistrano Beach, Orange County, Calif3
- An unreported exposure of the San Pedro Pleistocene3
- Marginal marine Pleistocene fossils from near mouth of Mad River, northern California2
- Late Pleistocene marine paleoecology and zoogeography on Central California2
- Pleistocene invertebrates from Punta China, Baja California, Mexico, with remarks on the composition of the Pacific coast Quaternary faunas2
Each of the 74 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. 6 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 Mopalia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mopalia 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, “Mopalia”
- 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 itMopaliidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1847