Nuculanidae
Nuculanidae is a family of small saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs in the order Nuculanida. Species in this family are found in all seas, from shallow to deep water.

Georges Jansoone ( JoJan ) · CC BY 3.0 · 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- Also called
- pointed nut clamPBDB
- Sits inside
- NuculanoideaPBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- coastal,inner shelf,outer shelf,oceanicPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 467 million years on record.
The record covers at least 468 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 477.1 Mya to 0 Mya.
4,447 occurrences of Nuculanidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
4,447 occurrences- Ordovicianunder 1%
- Silurianunder 1%
- Devonianunder 1%
- Carboniferous1%
- Permian2%
- Early Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassic4%
- Early Jurassic4%
- Middle Jurassic6%
- Late Jurassic2%
- Early Cretaceous3%
- Late Cretaceous15%
- Paleocene11%
- Eocene20%
- Oligocene4%
- Miocene11%
- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene5%
- 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
688 formations
- Chari Formation164
- Cook Mountain Formation · Claiborne Group134
- Moodys Branch Formation · Jackson Group88
- Kincaid Formation · Midway Group87
- Corsicana Marl Formation82
- Jagüel Formation · Malargüe Group80
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The named rock units Nuculanidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 664 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 630 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Nuculanidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Nuculanidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,240 taxa- Nuculana160 sites
- Nucula53 sites
- Inoceramus43 sites
- Dentalium42 sites
- Gastropoda41 sites
- Bryozoa39 sites
- Eburneopecten scintillatus39 sites
- Turritella39 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata37 sites
- Modiolus37 sites
- Bivalvia35 sites
- Panopea35 sites
- Syncyclonema35 sites
- Veniella conradi35 sites
- Crassatella vadosa34 sites
- Pycnodonte vesicularis34 sites
- Caestocorbula wailesiana33 sites
- Corbula densata33 sites
- Myrtaea (Myrtaea) curta33 sites
- Venericardia (Rotundicardia) diversidentata33 sites
- Corbula32 sites
- Crenella serica32 sites
- Cyprimeria32 sites
- Granocardium31 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,458 sites for Nuculanidae, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
703 references- Resilience of marine invertebrate communities during the early Cenozoic hyperthermals176
- Catalogue of the Paleocene and Eocene mollusca of the southern and eastern United States. Part 1. Pelecypoda, Amphineura, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda and Cephalopoda175
- Unpublished data from Kachchh171
- Molluscs at the K/Pg boundary in Argentina: Extinction and recovery patterns. unpublished Ph.D. thesis101
- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages99
- Ecological control of evolutionary rates in Paleocene - Eocene marine molluscs85
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrates from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the Atlantic Coastal Plain with further data for the East Gulf76
- Neogene and Paleogene Molluscan (Bivalvia) Cenozones of the Russian Northeast.72
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrate Fossils from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the west gulf Coastal Plain71
- Geology and paleontology of canal zone and adjoing parts of Panama: Description of Tertiary mollusks (additions to gastropods, scaphopods, pelecypods: Nuculidae to Malleidae)71
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain67
- Environmental and biological controls on the diversity and ecology of Late Cretaceous through early Paleogene marine ecosystems in the US Gulf Coastal Plain59
Each of the 4,447 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. 691 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 Nuculanidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Georges Jansoone ( JoJan )
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nuculanidae 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, “Nuculanidae”
- 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 itNuculanoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Adams and Adams 1858