Mutela
Mutela is a genus of freshwater mussels, aquatic bivalve mollusks in the family Iridinidae. Species in this genus have actual siphons, rather than unfused apertures, as do most other freshwater mussels.

Bourguignat, 1885 · CC0 · 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
- MutelidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Bivalvia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Unionida
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 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
9 occurrences of Mutela on record. 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
9 occurrences- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene38%
- Holocene56%
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
2 formations
- Kaiso Village Formation · Albertine Group2
- Koobi Fora Formation1
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The named rock units Mutela has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
206 taxa- Clarias7 sites
- Lates niloticus7 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius6 sites
- Redunca redunca5 sites
- Synodontis5 sites
- Aspatharia4 sites
- Bellamya unicolor4 sites
- Melanoides tuberculata4 sites
- Phacochoerus aethiopicus4 sites
- Polypterus4 sites
- Rhinocerotidae4 sites
- Thryonomys swinderianus4 sites
- Alcelaphini3 sites
- Canis aureus3 sites
- Cleopatra bulimoides3 sites
- Corbicula consobrina3 sites
- Crocodylus niloticus3 sites
- Diceros bicornis3 sites
- Etheria elliptica3 sites
- Felis3 sites
- Hippotragus equinus3 sites
- Homo sapiens3 sites
- Kobus ellipsiprymnus3 sites
- Ourebia ourebi3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Mutela, 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
5 references- Lakeside cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 years of Holocene population and environmental change3
- Decouverte du premier Homininae dans le Pleistocene de Nyabusosi2
- A revision of the faunal remains from two central Sudanese sites: Khartoum Hospital and Esh Shaheinab2
- Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers at Ishango (eastern Zaire): the faunal evidence1
- Paleoenvironments of the Koobi Fora Formation, Turkana Basin, Northern Kenya1
Each of the 9 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 content2
Picture of Mutela
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bourguignat, 1885
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Mutela bourguignati · OSUM:IZB:69732
Smithsonian Open Access was 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, “Mutela”
- 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 itMutelidae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Scopoli 1777