Planorbella
Planorbella is a genus of freshwater air-breathing snails, aquatic pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Planorbidae, the ram's horn snails, or planorbids, which all have sinistral, or left-coiling, shells. The Planorbella genus is not known to be colonial but are very plentiful and occur in large groupings. This genus is commonly found within North America, and is also found within various countries in Europe, including Iceland, Spain, Germany, France, Ukraine, and others. Over time, an increased amount of unintentional releases of the snails has led to Planorbella being found in more non-native areas like Siberia. Some of the earliest fossil records date back to the Miocene.

Uncredited · 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
- PlanorbidaePBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Planorbidae
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
29 occurrences of Planorbella on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
29 occurrences- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene90%
- Holocene7%
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
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The named rock units Planorbella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Planorbella and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Planorbella and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
418 taxa- Viviparus13 sites
- Daedalochila9 sites
- Haitia heterostropha heterostropha9 sites
- Polygyra8 sites
- Euglandina6 sites
- Pomacea6 sites
- Haitia heterostropha pomila5 sites
- Triodopsis5 sites
- Carditamera floridana4 sites
- Chione cancellata4 sites
- Haitia hendersoni4 sites
- Physella4 sites
- Acteocina candei3 sites
- Anadara (Larkinia) transversa3 sites
- Anadara lienosa floridana3 sites
- Anomia simplex3 sites
- Arcinella cornuta3 sites
- Arcopsis adamsi3 sites
- Astyris lunata3 sites
- Boonea seminuda3 sites
- Bostrycapulus aculeatus3 sites
- Brachidontes exustus3 sites
- Bulla striata3 sites
- Busycon contrarium3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Planorbella, 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
7 references- Non-marine Mollusca15
- The Pleistocene molluscan fauna from Leisley Shell Pit 1, Hillsborough County, Florida6
- Mollusca: Fort Thompson Formation (Late Pleistocene)4
- Excavation of a mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) from groundwater discharge deposits in Amargosa Valley, Nevada1
- Stratigraphy, paleoecology, and vertebrate fauna of the Leisey Shell Pit Local Fauna, early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) of southwestern Florida1
- The Shelton Mastodon Site: Multidisciplinary study of a late Pleistocene (Twocreekan) locality in Southeastern Michigan1
- Pliocene Molluscs and Fishes from Northeastern California and Northwestern Nevada1
Each of the 29 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 content1
Picture of Planorbella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Planorbella was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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, “Planorbella”
- 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 itPlanorbidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.