Pinna
Searched as Pinna aff. sandsfootensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Pinna as the accepted name.
Pinna is a genus of bivalve molluscs belonging to the family Pinnidae. The type species of the genus is Pinna rudis.

Hectonichus · 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
- PinnidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Ostreida
Time the record covers
At most 3.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 165.3 Mya and 161.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Pinna on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
3 occurrences- Middle Jurassic100%
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
- Mitarai Formation · Tetori Group3
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The named rock units Pinna has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Pinna and its relatives
Middle JurassicWhere Pinna and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
2,384 taxa- Astarte77 sites
- Camptonectes66 sites
- Isognomon49 sites
- Plagiostoma47 sites
- Entolium orbiculare46 sites
- Pleuromya uniformis46 sites
- Grammatodon45 sites
- Panopea44 sites
- Modiolus43 sites
- Serpula42 sites
- Ammonoidea40 sites
- Isocyprina39 sites
- Nuculana39 sites
- Linearis38 sites
- Cyprimeria37 sites
- Pleuromya37 sites
- Pycnodonte vesicularis36 sites
- Nucula35 sites
- Veniella conradi35 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata34 sites
- Granocardium34 sites
- Liopistha protexta34 sites
- Pholadomya34 sites
- Anomia argentaria33 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 998 sites for Pinna, 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
2 references- Mode of occurence and composition of bivalves of the Middle Jurassic Mitarai Formation, Tetori Group, Japan2
- A systematic survey of the Mesozoic Bivalvia from Japan1
Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Pinna
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hectonichus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- 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 itPinnidae through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758