Venus
Searched as Venus cf. venatorum. The Paleobiology Database treats Venus as the accepted name.
Venus is a genus of small to large saltwater clams in the family Veneridae, which is sometimes known as the Venus clams and their relatives. These are marine bivalve molluscs.

Uncredited · 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
- VenerinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Veneridae
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Veneridae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Veneridae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 11 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 61.66 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Venus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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- Late Cretaceous59%
- Paleocene41%
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 Venus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Venus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Venus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
3,371 taxa- Varicorbula gibba49 sites
- Cardium48 sites
- Turritella48 sites
- Gouldia (Gouldia) minima41 sites
- Limopsis39 sites
- Scapharca (Scapharca) diluvii39 sites
- Ostrea33 sites
- Aequipecten32 sites
- Nassarius30 sites
- Arca29 sites
- Chlamys29 sites
- Lentigodentalium29 sites
- Limopsis (Limopsis) aurita29 sites
- Conus28 sites
- Glycymeris28 sites
- Anadara27 sites
- Parvicardium26 sites
- Barbatia (Barbatia) barbata25 sites
- Lucinoma borealis25 sites
- Astarte (Astarte) radiata24 sites
- Dentalium (Pseudantilis)24 sites
- Natica24 sites
- Nucula (Nucula) nucleus24 sites
- Panopea24 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 242 sites for Venus, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Venus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Venus verrucosa · fmnh:invertebrate zoology:321193
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Loïc Norgeot
- 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
- 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 itVenerinae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758