Placopecten magellanicus
Placopecten magellanicus, previously listed as Pecten tenuicostatus and Pecten grandis, once referred to as the "giant scallop", and commonly known as the Atlantic deep-sea scallop, deep sea scallop, North Atlantic sea scallop, American sea scallop, Atlantic sea scallop, or sea scallop, is a commercially important pectinid bivalve mollusk native to the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Dann Blackwood, USGS · 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
- PlacopectenPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Pectinidae
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Pectinidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Pectinidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Pectinidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pectinida
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
8 occurrences of Placopecten magellanicus 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
8 occurrences- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene63%
- Holocene25%
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
3 formations
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Champlain Clay Formation1
- Satilla Formation1
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The named rock units Placopecten magellanicus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Placopecten magellanicus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Placopecten magellanicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
479 taxa- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa2 sites
- Crassostrea virginica2 sites
- Crepidula fornicata2 sites
- Crepidula plana2 sites
- Ilyanassa obsoleta2 sites
- Ilyanassa trivittata2 sites
- Neverita duplicatus2 sites
- Urosalpinx cinerea2 sites
- <Brotulid>1 site
- Acanthocybium solandri1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Acipenser oxyrhynchus1 site
- Acteocina canaliculata1 site
- Actinocythereis1 site
- Actinocythereis captionis1 site
- Acuticythereis1 site
- Aethiinae1 site
- Aetobatus1 site
- Agonidae1 site
- Alca1 site
- Alca ausonia1 site
- Alca carolinensis1 site
- Alca minor1 site
- Alca olsoni1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Placopecten magellanicus, 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- Studies on the marine Pleistocene: Part II. The marine Pleistocene mollusks of eastern North America4
- Discovery of a Pleistocene mysticete whale, Georgia Bight (USA)1
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions1
- Miocene and Pliocene Pectinidae (Bivalvia) from the Lee Creek Mine and adjacent areas1
- Stratigraphy, structure, absolute age, and paleontology of the upper Pleistocene deposits at Sankaty Head, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts1
Each of the 8 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 Placopecten magellanicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dann Blackwood, USGS
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Placopecten magellanicus · FMNH:Invertebrate Zoology:126630
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
- 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 itPlacopecten through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1791)