''Pseudolusitanops bulbiformis'' is an extinct species of

sea snail Sea snail is a common name for slow-moving marine gastropod molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguished from snails primarily by the ...

, a marine

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

mollusc Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

in the family

Raphitomidae Raphitomidae is a family of small to medium-sized sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.Bouchet P. & Rocroi J.-P. (Ed.) (2005). "Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families". ''Malacologia'' 47(1-2). . 39 ...

.MolluscaBase (2019). MolluscaBase. Pseudolusitanops bulbiformis (Lozouet, 1999) †. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1052256 on 2019-12-29

Description

More commonly known as the Lusitanops, the ''Pseudolusitanops bulbiformis'' was accepted as a species in the late 1900s. The only form of this creature remaining is

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

. The length of the shell attains 5.6 mm.

Distribution

Fossils of this extinct marine species were found in

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

strata in Aquitaine, France.

References

* Lozouet P. (1999). ''Nouvelles espèces de gastéropodes (Mollusca: Gastropoda) de l'Oligocène et du Miocène inférieur d'Aquitaine (sud-ouest de la France).'' Partie 2. Cossmanniana. 6: 1-68. * Lozouet (P.), 2017 ''Les Conoidea de l’Oligocène supérieur (Chattien) du bassin de l’Adour (Sud-Ouest de la France).'' Cossmanniana, t. 19, p. 1-179 bulbiformis Gastropods described in 1999 {{paleo-Raphitomidae-stub