Sphincterochila
Sphincterochila is a genus of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the family Sphincterochilidae.

Xvazquez · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- SphincterochilidaePBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Gastropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Gastropoda
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 129 ka.
3 occurrences of Sphincterochila on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Sphincterochila and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sphincterochila and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
91 taxa- Bufo bufo2 sites
- Cernuella2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Rumina2 sites
- Rumina decollata2 sites
- Xerosecta2 sites
- Agamidae1 site
- Anthus pratensis1 site
- Apodemus1 site
- Arvicola1 site
- Athene noctua1 site
- Blanus1 site
- Bos primigenius1 site
- Bythinella1 site
- Canis othmanii1 site
- Capra1 site
- Carduelis carduelis1 site
- Castillomys rivas1 site
- Ceratotherium simum1 site
- Cervidae1 site
- cf. Armadillium sp.1 site
- Chloris chloris1 site
- Chondrina farinesii1 site
- Coleoptera1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Sphincterochila, 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
3 references- Terrestrial Gastropoda from the Pleistocene of Beni Saf, NW Algeria1
- Canis othmanii sp. nov. (Carnivora, Canidae) from the early Middle Pleistocene site of Wadi Sarrat (Tunisia)1
- Une faune tres diversifee du Pleistocene inferieur de la Sierra de Quibas (province de Murcia, Espagne)1
Each of the 3 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Sphincterochila
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Xvazquez
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Sphincterochila was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itSphincterochilidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ancey 1887