Plicatula
Plicatula is a genus of saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs, known commonly as kitten's paws or kittenpaws in the family Plicatulidae.

RealGatba · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- PlicatulidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attached, epibiontPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pectinida
Time the record covers
At least 246 million years on record.
The record covers at least 247 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 250.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,374 occurrences of Plicatula on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
1,374 occurrences- Early Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassic4%
- Early Jurassic22%
- Middle Jurassic4%
- Late Jurassic5%
- Early Cretaceous8%
- Late Cretaceous30%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene8%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene5%
- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene6%
- 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
297 formations
- Prairie Bluff Formation · Selma Group71
- Cook Mountain Formation · Claiborne Group24
- Corsicana Marl Formation21
- Chari Formation19
- São Gião Formation17
- Matulla Formation16
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The named rock units Plicatula has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 273 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 395 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Plicatula and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Plicatula and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2,063 taxa- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata80 sites
- Serpula71 sites
- Turritella65 sites
- Anomia argentaria61 sites
- Pycnodonte vesicularis58 sites
- Idonearca capax57 sites
- Crassatella vadosa56 sites
- Cliona52 sites
- Crenella serica52 sites
- Bryozoa50 sites
- Gryphaeostrea vomer50 sites
- Veniella conradi49 sites
- Spondylus46 sites
- Pycnodonte41 sites
- Turritella vertebroides41 sites
- Cardium40 sites
- Liopistha protexta39 sites
- Cyprimeria38 sites
- Nuculana38 sites
- Gyrodes petrosus36 sites
- Lima acutilineata36 sites
- Pterotrigonia (Scabrotrigonia)36 sites
- Drilluta34 sites
- Granocardium34 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,038 sites for Plicatula, 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
335 references- Palökologie benthischer Faunen aus dem Unter-Toarc SW-Europas71
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain66
- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages53
- The Lower Jurassic Rocks of East Greenland Part 136
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions35
- Unpublished data24
- Late Cretaceous macrofossils from Sinai, Egypt22
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrate Fossils from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the west gulf Coastal Plain21
- Review of bivalve genus Plicatula from Cretaceous and Lower Cenozoic strata of California and Baja California20
- Palokologie und zeitliche Verbreitung benthischer Faunengemeinschaften im Unterjura von Chile20
- The Cenomanian and Turonian in Northeastern Central Asia20
- Some Venezualan and Caribbean Mollusks18
Each of the 1,374 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. 323 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 content2
Picture of Plicatula
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- RealGatba
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- Plicatula gibbosa · FMNH:Invertebrate Zoology:197534
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Plicatula”
- 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 itPlicatulidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1801