Vitularia
Vitularia is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or rock snails.

King & Broderip, 1832 · CC0 · 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
- MuricidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Muricidae
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Muricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Muricidae
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Gastropoda
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 20.45 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
16 occurrences of Vitularia 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
16 occurrences- Miocene44%
- Pliocene31%
- Pleistocene25%
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
11 formations
- Korytnica Clays Formation2
- Onzole Formation1
- Daule Formation1
- Penita Formation · Charco Azul Group1
- Apostoli Formation1
- Falun de Saucats Formation1
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The named rock units Vitularia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Vitularia and its relatives
MioceneWhere Vitularia and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
913 taxa- Turricula5 sites
- Amalda glandiformis4 sites
- Cardium4 sites
- Murex4 sites
- Oliva4 sites
- Aequipecten3 sites
- Aporrhais3 sites
- Architectonica3 sites
- Bolma3 sites
- Cantharus3 sites
- Cerithium3 sites
- Chama gryphoides3 sites
- Chlamys3 sites
- Coralliophila3 sites
- Diodora (Diodora) italica3 sites
- Fusinus3 sites
- Galeodes cornutus3 sites
- Hexaplex3 sites
- Latirus3 sites
- Mitra3 sites
- Mitrella3 sites
- Narona3 sites
- Nassarius3 sites
- Natica3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Vitularia, 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- Lower to Middle Miocene Mollusc assemblages from the Torino Hills (NW Italy): Synthesis of new data and chronostratigraphical arrangement1
- Middle Miocene (Badenian) gastropods from Korytnica, Poland; Part V Addenda et Corrigenda ad Prosobranchia1
- Sedimentology of rocky shorelines: 4. Coarse gravel lithofacies, molluscan biofacies, and the stratigraphic and eustatic records in the type area of the Pleistocene Hulopoe Gravel, Lanai, Hawaii1
- Discovery of two teeth of Squalodon (Cetacea Odontoceti) in the Burdigalian of SW France (Martillac, Leognan). Comments about the Squalodon from Aquitaine Basin, the paleoecology of the outcrops, and the type species of the genus1
- Révision des Gastropoda (Mollusca) du stratotype de L'Aquitanien (Miocéne inf.) site de Saucats "Lariey", Gironde, France1
- A paleobiotic survey of Caribbean faunas from the Neogene of the Isthmus of Panama1
- Middle Miocene (Badenian) gastropods from Korytnica, Poland; Part II1
- Muricidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of the Esmeraldas Beds, northwestern Ecuador1
- Biozonation of the Neogene invertebrate megafauna of the Hellenic area1
- The Pliocene Reefs of Miami: Their Geomorphological Significance in the Evolution of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge, Southeastern Florida, U.S.A.1
- Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific Islands; Gastropods (Eratoidae through Harpidae)1
- Fossil mollusks of Oahu, Hawaii Islands1
Each of the 16 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 Vitularia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- King & Broderip, 1832
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Vitularia was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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, “Vitularia”
- 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 itMuricidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Swainson 1840