Vermicularia spirata
Vermicularia spirata, common name the West Indian worm-shell or the West Indian wormsnail, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Turritellidae. Juveniles can move around, but larger individuals become sessile.

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
- VermiculariaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Turritellidae
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Turritellidae
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Turritellidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 5.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka.
34 occurrences of Vermicularia spirata on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
34 occurrences- Miocene11%
- Pliocene57%
- Pleistocene32%
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
17 formations
- Talparo Formation4
- Gurabo Formation4
- Bowden Formation · Coastal Group3
- Jackson Bluff Formation · Alum Bluff Group3
- Bermont Formation2
- Chowan RIver Formation2
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The named rock units Vermicularia spirata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Vermicularia spirata and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Vermicularia spirata and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
1,175 taxa- Plicatula gibbosa13 sites
- Diodora10 sites
- Nucula (Nucula) proxima10 sites
- Crassinella lunulata9 sites
- Glycymeris americana8 sites
- Abra aequalis7 sites
- Anadara (Rasia) lienosa7 sites
- Arcopsis adamsi7 sites
- Caecum7 sites
- Crassinella7 sites
- Parvilucina multistriata7 sites
- Tectonatica pusilla7 sites
- Anomia simplex6 sites
- Astarte concentrica6 sites
- Calyptraea centralis6 sites
- Donax fossor6 sites
- Gouldia6 sites
- Olivella mutica6 sites
- Aesopus5 sites
- Chama5 sites
- Chione cancellata5 sites
- Dentalium (Graptacme)5 sites
- Donax5 sites
- Naticarius canrena5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Vermicularia spirata, 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
16 references- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions12
- Miocene and Pliocene mollusks from Trinidad4
- Mollusca from the Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Virginia and North Carolina: Part 2. Scaphopoda and Gastropoda3
- Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Mollusca from the James City and Chowan River Formations at Lee Creek Mine2
- Miocene gastropods and scaphopods of the Choctawatchee Formation of Florida2
- Unpublished notes on Caribbean collection of Jack and Winifred Gibson-Smith, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel1
- Moluscos de la Formación Agueguexquite (Plioceno inferior) de Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, México1
- Mollusca: Fort Thompson Formation (Late Pleistocene)1
- Monografia de los Moluscos del Mioceno Medio de Santa Rosa, Verazruz, Mexico1
- Neogene Stratigraphy of the lower Coast Plain of the Carolinas1
- The marine Pleistocene mollusks of Bermuda1
- Neogene Biostratigraphy of the Charlotte Harbor Area in Southwestern Florida1
Each of the 34 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. 4 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 content1
Picture of Vermicularia spirata
- 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
No 3D scan of Vermicularia spirata 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 itVermicularia through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Philippi 1836)