Purpuroidea
Purpuroidea is an extinct genus of sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the clade Littorinimorpha.

Hectonichus · 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
- PurpurinidaePBDB
- Diet
- grazerPBDB, for Littorinoidea
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Littorinoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Littorinoidea
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 117 million years on record.
The record covers at least 237 Mya to 119.57 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 113.2 Mya.
83 occurrences of Purpuroidea on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. 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
83 occurrences- Middle Triassic4%
- Late Triassic29%
- Early Jurassic3%
- Middle Jurassic45%
- Late Jurassic15%
- Early Cretaceous5%
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
21 formations
- Tataouine Formation12
- Dhahab Formation · Azab Group7
- Mughanniyya Formation · Azab Group7
- Fődolomit Formation6
- Hamam Formation · Azab Group5
- Cassian Formation5
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The named rock units Purpuroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Purpuroidea and its relatives
Middle JurassicWhere Purpuroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
930 taxa- Pholadomya lirata13 sites
- Eligmus10 sites
- Daghanirhynchia9 sites
- Coelostylina conica8 sites
- Eudesia8 sites
- Mactromya aequalis7 sites
- Plagiostoma7 sites
- Pseudomelania7 sites
- Dorsoplicathyris dorsoplicata6 sites
- Homomya6 sites
- Pholadomya6 sites
- Sphriganaria subcircularis6 sites
- Thamnasteria6 sites
- Ampullospira5 sites
- Bathrotomaria5 sites
- Cassianopsis armata5 sites
- Delphinulopsis binodosa5 sites
- Eudesia (Sphriganaria) magharensis5 sites
- Globularia5 sites
- Liostrea5 sites
- Protocardia5 sites
- Rhynchonella5 sites
- Trichites5 sites
- Tubithyris chouberti5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 55 sites for Purpuroidea, 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
25 references- Taxonomy and palaeoecology of the benthic macroinvertebrate fauna from the Middle Jurassic of northwestern Jordan19
- Palökologie benthischer Faunengemeinschaften und Taxonomie der Bivalven im Jura von Südtunesien13
- Triassische Megalodontaceae - Entwicklung, Stratigraphie und Palaontologie10
- Fossili Giurassici dell'Harar (Africa Orientale): Brachiopodi, Lamellibranchi e Gasteropodi [Jurassic fossils from Harar (Eastern Africa): brachiopods, lamellibranchs and gastropods]5
- Unpublished data4
- Die Gastropoden der Schichten von St. Cassian der südalpinen Trias. III. Theil4
- Die Gastropoden des Marmolatakalkes3
- Latest Triassic (Sevatian–Rhaetian) reef carbonates from the Northern Calcareous Alps (Austria), their mollusc dwellers, and their fate at the end‑Triassic extinction event2
- Late Jurassic coral/microbial reefs from the northern Paris Basin - facies, paleoecology and paleobiogeography2
- Le Jurassique D`Arabie Centrale2
- Kase, 19842
- Recherches géologiques sur le Crétacé inférieur de l'Estremadura (Portugal)2
Each of the 83 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. 13 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 content1
Picture of Purpuroidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hectonichus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Purpuroidea”
- 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 itPurpurinidae through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lycett 1848