Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:29:32.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Petaloconchus sculpturatus alaminatus, a new Pliocene subspecies of vermetid gastropods lacking its defining generic character, with comments on vermetid systematics in general

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould*
Affiliation:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The systematics of vermetid gastropods is in a shambles, with few genera defined by valid autapomorphic characters. Heretofore, the genus Petaloconchus has been included among the few adequately characterized groups, thanks to possession of a double internal lamina on the middle whorls. Yet abundant anecdotal information has been available for 100 years on the absence of laminae in high percentages of individuals within samples, and in entire populations that must be placed within the genealogical nexus of Petaloconchus. I demonstrate that such a nonlaminate population exists within the very material used to define the type species of the genus, Pliocene Petaloconchus sculpturatus Lea, 1843, from the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain of the United States. I use X-radiography and multivariate biometry to show that this population from the Pliocene Jackson Bluff Formation at Jackson Bluff, Florida, is fully alaminate, but otherwise indistinguishable from P. sculpturatus. After considering a range of solutions, I name this population as a new subspecies, Petaloconchus sculpturatus alaminatus. I discuss theoretical and practical issues arising from populations that lack the defining feature of their genus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 68 , Issue 5 , September 1994 , pp. 1025 - 1036
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, R. T. 1974. American Seashells: The Marine Mollusca of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of North America. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 663 pp.Google Scholar
Carpenter, P. P. 1857. First steps towards a monograph of the Recent species of Petaloconchus, a genus of Vermetidae. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, Pt. 24 for 1856:313–317.Google Scholar
Dall, W. H., and Stanley-Brown, J. 1894. Cenozoic geology along the Apalachicola River. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 5:147–170.Google Scholar
Du Bar, J. R., and Taylor, D. S. 1963. Paleoecology of the Choctawhatchee Deposits, Jackson Bluff, Florida. Transactions of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, 12:349–376.Google Scholar
Gardner, J. 1948. Mollusca from the Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Virginia and North Carolina. Part 2. Scaphopoda and Gastropoda. U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 199-B:179–310.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J., and Robinson, B. A. In press. Fortunes of reversal. The geometry and morphology of maximally recoiled and snail-like vermetids. Paleobiology.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J., and Vrba, E. S. 1982. Exaptation—a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8:4–15.Google Scholar
Guppy, R. J. L. 1866. On the Tertiary Mollusca of Jamaica. The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 22:281–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadfield, M. G. 1966. The reproductive biology of the California vermetid gastropods Serpulorbis squamigerus (Carpenter, 1957) and Petaloconchus montereyensis . Unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, 174 pp.Google Scholar
Hadfield, M. G. 1970. Observations on the anatomy and biology of two California vermetid gastropods. The Veliger, 12:301–309.Google Scholar
Hadfield, M. G., Kay, E. A., Gillette, M. U., and Lloyd, M. C. 1972. The Vermetidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of the Hawaiian Islands. Marine Biology, 12:81–98.Google Scholar
Jones, D. S., MacFadden, B. J., Webb, S. D., Mueller, P. A., Hodell, D. A., and Cronin, T. M. 1991. Integrated geochronology of a classic Pliocene fossil site in Florida: linking marine and terrestrial biochronologies. Journal of Geology, 99:637–648.Google Scholar
Keen, A. M. 1961. A proposed reclassification of the gastropod family Vermetidae. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Zoology, 7:183–213.Google Scholar
Keen, A. M. 1971a. Two new supraspecific taxa in the Gastropoda. The Veliger, 13:296.Google Scholar
Keen, A. M. 1971b. Sea Shells of Tropical West America. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1,064 pp.Google Scholar
Keen, A. M. 1981. Vermetidae of the Gulf of California, Mexico. The Western Society of Malacologists, Annual Report, 14:16.Google Scholar
Ladd, H. S. 1972. Cenozoic fossil mollusks from Western Pacific islands; gastropods (Turritellidae through Strombidae). U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 532, 79 pp.Google Scholar
Lea, H. C. 1843. (Volume published 1846). Description of some new fossil shells, from the Tertiary of Petersburg, Virginia. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 9:229–274.Google Scholar
Mansfield, W. C. 1930. Miocene gastropods and scaphopods of the Choctawhatchee Formation of Florida. Florida State Geological Survey, Bulletin 3, 142 pp.Google Scholar
Mörch, O. A. L. 1861. Review of the Vermetidae, Pts. I and II. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, for 1861:145–181, 326–365.Google Scholar
Morton, J. E. 1955. The evolution of Vermetid gastropods. Pacific Science, 9:3–15.Google Scholar
Morton, J. E. 1965. Form and function in the evolution of the Vermetidae. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Zoology, 11:583–630.Google Scholar
Olsson, A. A., and Harbison, A. 1953. Pliocene Mollusca of Southern Florida, with special reference to those from North Saint Petersburg. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Monographs, 8, 457 pp.Google Scholar
Pilsbry, H. A., and Lowe, H. N. 1932. West Mexican and Central American Mollusks collected by H. N. Lowe, 1929–31. Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 84:33–144.Google Scholar
Puri, H. S. 1953. Contribution to the study of the Miocene of the Florida Panhandle. Florida Geological Survey, Bulletin 36, 345 pp.Google Scholar
Rafinesque, C. S. 1815. Analyses de la nature ou tableau du univers et des corps organisés. Barravecchia, Palermo, 224 pp.Google Scholar
Say, T. 1824. An account of some of the fossil shells of Maryland. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 4:124–155.Google Scholar
Sowerby, G. B. 1849. (Volume published 1850). Descriptions of new species of fossil shells found by J. S. Heniker. The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 6:44–53.Google Scholar
Stanley, S. M. 1986. Anatomy of a regional mass extinction: Plio-Pleistocene decimation of the western Atlantic bivalve fauna. Palaios, 1:17–36.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. D. K. 1970. Functional morphology, ecology and evolution in the genus Glycymeris (Bivalvia). Unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 397 pp.Google Scholar