Oxytoma
Searched as Oxytoma (Hypoxytoma) danica danica. The Paleobiology Database treats Oxytoma as the accepted name.
Oxytoma is an extinct genus of bivalve molluscs that lived from the Late Permian to the early Paleocene, with a worldwide distribution except Australia. The genus was named in 1864 by Fielding Bradford Meek.

H. Zell · CC BY-SA 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- Sits inside
- OxytomidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pectinida
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 72.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Oxytoma on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
1 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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 Oxytoma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Oxytoma and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Oxytoma and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,364 taxa- Astarte50 sites
- Camptonectes48 sites
- Plagiostoma47 sites
- Palaeonucula40 sites
- Parallelodon40 sites
- Pleuromya38 sites
- Liostrea37 sites
- Entolium orbiculare36 sites
- Entolium35 sites
- Grammatodon34 sites
- Cylindrobullina33 sites
- Isocyprina33 sites
- Isognomon33 sites
- Kalchreuthia frankei33 sites
- Levipleura blainvillei33 sites
- Palaeoneilo galatea33 sites
- Belemnitida32 sites
- Laevidentalium32 sites
- Ammonoidea31 sites
- Chlamys30 sites
- Ovactaeonina kalchreuthensis30 sites
- Ovactaeonina sendelbachensis30 sites
- Pinna30 sites
- Buchia mosquensis29 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 656 sites for Oxytoma, and this reads 240 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 Oxytoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- H. Zell
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Oxytoma 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, “Oxytoma”
- 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 itOxytomidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Meek and Hayden 1865)