Vexillum
Vexillum is a genus of small to medium-sized sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Costellariidae.

Jan Delsing · 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
- CostellariidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Costellariidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Costellariidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Costellariidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 93 million years on record.
The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
266 occurrences of Vexillum 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
266 occurrences- Late Cretaceousunder 1%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene3%
- Oligocene13%
- Miocene33%
- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene23%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
64 formations
- Termofourà Formation17
- Vigo Formation14
- Bowden Formation · Coastal Group11
- Waimanalo Formation10
- Shoal River Formation · Alum Bluff Group9
- Gurabo Formation8
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Vexillum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 40 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 81 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Vexillum and its relatives
MioceneWhere Vexillum and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
2,337 taxa- Bittium27 sites
- Polinices23 sites
- Glycymeris22 sites
- Arcopagia21 sites
- Abra20 sites
- Calyptraea20 sites
- Corbula20 sites
- Ctena20 sites
- Lucina20 sites
- Odostomia20 sites
- Parvicardium20 sites
- Saxolucina20 sites
- Tympanotonos20 sites
- Cordiopsis incrassata19 sites
- Cytherea (Callista) splendida19 sites
- Granulolabium plicatum19 sites
- Lentidium (Ajanssenium) nitidum19 sites
- Lunatia19 sites
- Parvilucina19 sites
- Turboella turbinata19 sites
- Bayania semidecussata18 sites
- Benoistia18 sites
- Cylichna18 sites
- Paralucinella undulata18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 90 sites for Vexillum, and this reads all 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
66 references- Skwarko, 199425
- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Eratoidae through Harpidae)25
- Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement19
- Biostratigraphie et paleoecologie des gisements types du Stampian de la region d''Etampes (Essonne)19
- Unpublished census data from Atlantic coastal plain and circum-Caribbean Neogene assemblages and taxonomic opinions14
- Age and stratigraphic significance for Lyellian correlation of the fauna of the Vigo Formation, Luzon, Phillipines14
- Mollusken aus posttertiären Schichten von Celebes13
- Lower Oligocene Gastropoda, Scaphopoda, and Cephalopoda of the Vicksburg Group in Mississippi10
- Fossil mollusks of Oahu, Hawaii Islands10
- Mollusca: Shoal River Formation (Middle Miocene9
- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Volutidae through Terebridae)7
- Preliminary notes on fossil records of East Malaysia and Brunei6
Each of the 266 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. 54 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 content3
Picture of Vexillum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Delsing
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Bractechlamys vexillum · usnm:invertebrate zoology:613675
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- ArheologiePrahova
- Licence
- Free Standard
- 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 itCostellariidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Röding 1798