Tutufa
Tutufa is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Bursidae, the frog shells. They have an Indo-West Pacific distribution.

George Chernilevsky · Public Domain · 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
- BursidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Bursidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Bursidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Bursidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka.
11 occurrences of Tutufa on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
11 occurrences- Oligocene6%
- Miocene85%
- Pleistocene9%
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
4 formations
- Chipola Formation · Alum Bluff Group6
- Waimanalo Formation1
- Ena Limestone Formation · Yugashima Group1
- Falun de Leognan Formation1
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The named rock units Tutufa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tutufa and its relatives
MioceneWhere Tutufa and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
217 taxa- Bursa (Tutufa) pelouatensis5 sites
- Alabina (Caloosalba) boiplex4 sites
- Alabina (Caloosalba) turbatrix4 sites
- Chicoreus (Chicoreus) elusivus4 sites
- Conus ambonos4 sites
- Conus chipolanus4 sites
- Conus demiurgus4 sites
- Conus gardnerae4 sites
- Hemicerithium cossmanni4 sites
- Monoplex ritteri4 sites
- Oliva (Omogymna) liodes4 sites
- Oliva (Omogymna) martensii4 sites
- Poirieria (Panamurex) mauryae4 sites
- Rhinoclavis (Ochetoclava) chipolana4 sites
- Typhina obesa4 sites
- Alaba chipolana3 sites
- Basterotia (Basterotella) miocenica3 sites
- Bittium serenum3 sites
- Bursa chipolana3 sites
- Cerithium (Thericium) burnsii3 sites
- Chicoreus (Siratus) juliagardnerae3 sites
- Conus aquoreus3 sites
- Conus isomatratus3 sites
- Conus sulculus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Tutufa, 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
5 references- Notes on the fauna of the Chipola Formation - XIV: On the occurrence of Bursa (Mollusca: Gastropoda), with comments on the genus6
- Les Mesogastropoda Fossiles du Cenozoïque étranger des Collections de L'Institute Royale des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique2
- Turbo (Gastropoda: Turbinidae) fossils from the middle Miocene of Izu Peninsula, central Japan, including the description of three new species1
- Fossil mollusks of Oahu, Hawaii Islands1
- Fossil Mollusca from the reef-limestones of Christmas Island1
Each of the 11 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. 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 Tutufa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- George Chernilevsky
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tutufa 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Tutufa”
- 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 itBursidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Jousseaume 1881)