Zirphaea

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- PholadidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Life habit
- boringPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Motility
- stationaryPBDB, for Pholadidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 10 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 66 Mya and 56 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Zirphaea on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
2 occurrences- Paleocene100%
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
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The named rock units Zirphaea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Zirphaea and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Zirphaea and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
48 taxa- Acila (Truncacila) decisa2 sites
- Ampullina striata2 sites
- Corbula2 sites
- Cucullaea mathewsonii2 sites
- Flabellum cuneiforme2 sites
- Meretrix stantoni2 sites
- Nuculana (Saccella) gabbii2 sites
- Paphia clarki2 sites
- Scaphander (Mirascapha) costatus2 sites
- Teredo2 sites
- Tritonium martinezensis2 sites
- Turritella infragranulata2 sites
- Urosyca caudata2 sites
- Acesta (Acesta) multiradiata1 site
- Brachysphingus sinuatus1 site
- Calyptraea diegoana1 site
- Cardiomya dolabraeformis1 site
- Cardium1 site
- Centrocardita veneriformis1 site
- Cidaris1 site
- Dentalium1 site
- Dentalium cooperi1 site
- Fusus1 site
- Glycymerita major1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Zirphaea, 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Zirphaea
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Zirphaea 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPholadidae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1840