Rastellum
Rastellum is a genus of extinct molluscs, which lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous.

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- ArctostreinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Ostreida
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Ostreida
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Ostreida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Ostreida
Time the record covers
At least 93 million years on record.
The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 66 Mya.
171 occurrences of Rastellum on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
171 occurrencesThese 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
44 formations
- Prairie Bluff Formation · Selma Group23
- Denton Formation · Washita Group16
- Enokuchi Formation · Goshoura Group5
- Folkestone Formation · Lower Greensand Group4
- Grès verts helvétiques Formation4
- Peruc-Korycany Formation4
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The named rock units Rastellum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 20 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 60 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Rastellum and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Rastellum and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,491 taxa- Pycnodonte vesicularis34 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata28 sites
- Spondylus28 sites
- Idonearca capax26 sites
- Serpula25 sites
- Anomia argentaria24 sites
- Granocardium24 sites
- Crassatella vadosa22 sites
- Camptonectes virgatus21 sites
- Gryphaeostrea vomer21 sites
- Plicatula21 sites
- Bellifusus20 sites
- Linearis19 sites
- Turritella19 sites
- Turritella vertebroides19 sites
- Veniella conradi19 sites
- Cardium18 sites
- Cliona18 sites
- Cyprimeria18 sites
- Gyrodes abyssinus18 sites
- Liopistha protexta18 sites
- Nuculana18 sites
- Baculites16 sites
- Bryozoa16 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 137 sites for Rastellum, 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
56 references- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages19
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain19
- A Paleoecologic Study of the Upper Denton Formation, Tarrant, Denton, and Cooke Counties, Texas16
- A systematic survey of the Mesozoic Bivalvia from Japan9
- Cretaceous oysters from North Africa : origin and distribution8
- The stratigraphical palaeontology of the Lower Greensand7
- Stratigraphy and fossil bivalve assemblages of the mid-Cretaceous Goshoura Group, southwest Japan6
- Variations morphologiques des Toxaster (Echinoida : Spatangoida) en regard des fluctuations spatiales (Arc de Castellane, SE France) et temporelles (Valanginien-Hauterivien) du milieu sédimentaire : expression d'un potentiel adaptatif restreint5
- Late Cretaceous environments and communities as recorded at Chrtníky (Bohemian Cretaceous Basin, Czech Republic)4
- The Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous of Wadi Hajar, southern Yemen4
- Les grès verts helvétiques (Aptien moyen-Albien supérieur) de Haute-Savoie, Valais et Vaud (Alpes occidentales franco-suisses)4
- Fabric of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Marine Macrofaunal Transition at Braggs, Alabama4
Each of the 171 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. 44 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 Rastellum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James St. John
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- 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 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, “Rastellum”
- 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 itArctostreinae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Faujas de Saint Fond 1799