Turritella
Searched as Turritella inca trita. The Paleobiology Database treats Turritella as the accepted name.
Turritella is a genus of medium-sized sea snails with an operculum, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Turritellidae.

Dr. Zachi Evenor · 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- Also called
- turret shellPBDB
- Sits inside
- TurritellinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At most 7.1 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 15.98 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Turritella on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
1 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Turritella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Turritella and its relatives
MioceneWhere Turritella and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,996 taxa- Gastropoda49 sites
- Cadulus48 sites
- Nuculana45 sites
- Corbula44 sites
- Bivalvia40 sites
- Calyptraea (Trochita) aperta34 sites
- Hipponix34 sites
- Retusa galba34 sites
- Serpula34 sites
- Athleta petrosa32 sites
- Eburneopecten scintillatus32 sites
- Ficus32 sites
- Naticidae32 sites
- Dentalium30 sites
- Pycnodonte30 sites
- Drepanocheilus29 sites
- Levifusus mortoniopsis29 sites
- Pseudoliva vetusta29 sites
- Barbatia (Plagiarca) rhomboidella28 sites
- Ostreidae28 sites
- Cucullaea27 sites
- Endopachys maclurii27 sites
- Trachycardium27 sites
- Bryozoa26 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,276 sites for Turritella, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 content3
Picture of Turritella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dr. Zachi Evenor
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- turritella plebia · MST:PALEO:MST-SP-2935
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Turritella”
- 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 itTurritellinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1799