Phylum Mollusca

•Molle=soft bodies
•Second largest phylum (family) (100,000 recorded)
•Soft body covered within a calcareous shell
•Body is unsegmented
•Their bodies are normally elongate
•Body size varies from 1mm to 18m (dominated 5cm)
•Ecologically distributed- marine, fresh water and
terrestrial
•Some species swim some sessile and some crawl
on sea floor
•Body divided into two parts- head-foot and
visceral mass
•Shell – monovalvular or bivalvular, or internal or
may be absent
•Sense organs – eyes or statocyst
Why Mollusca is important for paleontologist???
•They have tremendous morphological diversity.
•Molluscas usually possess well-calcified
skeletons that have easily recognized features.
•The phylum has exploited a wide variety of
environments, from terrestrial forests, to
freshwater lakes, down to the deepest parts of
the ocean.
•The molluscs have an excellent fossil record
extending back to the earliest Cambrian.
 •Class Aplacophora
•Class Monoplacophora
Classification •Class Polyplacophora
Of •Class Scaphopoda
Phylum •Class Bivalvia (Pelecypoda)
Mollusca •Class Gastropoda
•Class Cephalopoda
•Class Rostroconchia
 Classification

• Phylum Mollusca is divided into eight classes.

Class Aplacophora forms no hard parts and
has no fossil record.
• Class Monoplacophora
– Cambrian-Recent.
– Most primitives molluscan
– Generally possesses a univalved, cap-shaped
shell with little or no spiraling; soft parts show
some segmentation.
• Class Polyplacophora
– Cambrian-Recent. Usually possesses a shell
formed of eight overlapping valves; foot is broad;
head reduced.
Class Scaphopoda
•Ordovician-Recent.
•Shell tubular (tusk shaped), expanded at one end
and open at both; foot conical; no gills present.
Class Bivalvia (Pelecypoda)
•Cambrian-Recent.
•Shell usually of two valves hinged dorsally; foot
generally hatchet-shaped; head lacking.
Class Rostroconchia
Cambrian-Recent (extinct). Shell consists of two equal valves
joined in adults by an enclosed hinge; the posterior of the
shell is usually produced into an elongate tube.
Class Gastropoda
Cambrian-Recent. Generally a spirally-coiled shell- body
usually asymmetrical, with a distinct head, pair of eyes, and
one or two pairs of tentacles; foot is broad.
Class Cephalopoda
Cambrian-Recent. Large head with well-developed eyes,
horny (chitinous) jaws, and many tentacles; head fused to
foot; shell (when present) external or internal.
Extant Molluscan classes

Gastropoda Cephalopoda Bivalvia

(snails) (octopus, squid, (clams, mussels)
nautilus)

Aplacophora
Polyplacophora
Monoplacophora (chitons)

Scaphopoda
(tusk shells)
Class Bivalvia (Pelecypoda)
Key notes on Class Bivalve
•Body consists of two valves connected by hinge
•Bilateral symmetry
•Range in size from 1–2 mm in length to the giant
South Pacific clams (1m)
•Umbo is the oldest part of the shell with growth
occurring outward in rings
•No head or radula (tiny teeth)
•Soft part of the body is protected within shell
(valve)
•Most are benthic and quite sluggish, although a few can
swim through the water for short distances by clapping
the valves powerfully.
•Habitat: Marine and freshwater.
•Many bivalves burrow into various substrata, from sand
and mud to wood and rock.
•some of them is attachment to the sea bottom, or some
type of hard substrate (shells, rocks, piers, wharves, boat
hulls, etc.).
•Geologic range: Early Cambrian to Recent
Bivalve Anatomy
 Classification of Bivalve

• Many diverse schemes have been developed

for the classification of bivalves, but in
paleontology we use one based on shell
morphology.
• The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology
employs a system based on general shell
shape, microstructure and hinge
configuration.
Subclass Palaeotaxodonta
• The palaeotaxodonts are the simplest and most primitive
of the bivalves. They have an equi-valved shell and
taxodont dentition (numerous approximately equal,
undifferentiated hinge teeth). These include the labial
palp-feeding nuculoids, which are small clams found today
in deep water and fine sediment.
Subclass Pteriomorpha
• All the pteriomorphs are byssate or cemented as adults,
and most have auricles of some sort at the hinge margin,
but convergence and parallelism have made the
determination of more definitive shell characters
impossible. Important pteriomorphs include the arcoids,
mytiloids, pectinaceans, ostreaceans, and inoceramids.
Subclass Palaeoheterodonta
These were the first bivalves to appear in the fossil
record-palaeoheterodonts are known from certain
Cambrian rocks. They are equi-valved and usually
have only a few hinge teeth. The important
palaeoheterodonta include the unionaceans
(freshwater clams), and trigonoids.
Subclass Heterodonta
The heterodonts include most of the common clams.
Their hinge teeth are differentiated into vertical
cardinals below the beak (umbo) and sub-horizontal
laterals on either side. Most are infaunal siphon
feeders (the most notable exception being the
mucus-tube building lucinaceans). Included in the
heterodonts are the lucinaceans, carditaceans,
crassatellaceans, rudistaceans and veneraceans.
Bivalve
Comparison of Pelecypoda and Brachiopoda
 LIFE CYCLE
• The usual reproductive pattern is to have
separate sexes. Sperm and eggs are released
into the water, where passive fertilization
occurs.
• The young bivalve, or larva, swims until it
locates an appropriate habitat in which to
mature.
• Sometimes, however, the larval stage is
omitted, and the young are cared for within
the mantle cavity of the adult.
 COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE
• Several bivalve species are important to humans as
food sources and as the prey of food fish
• Their shells are also used for many purposes,
including the making of buttons.
• The culture of oysters is a major industry in many
parts of the world, not only for food but also for the
pearls their mantles secrete around intruding
objects or organisms.
• A few bivalves are pests; shipworms, in particular,
burrow into wood and damage or destroy piers and
vessels.
 Bivalve Evolution
• Bivalves evolutionary history extends to Cambrian, with two
genera: Poletaila from Australia; and Fordilla, from North
America, Scandinavia and Siberia.
• Origins of the Palaeotaxodont and Isofihibranch bivalves can
be traced to these two genera.
• Bivalves radiated in the Ordovician, with probably the
Isofihibranch bivalves giving rise to the rest of the groups.
• A second adaptive radiation took place at the close of the
Palaeozoic, then bivalves displaced brachiopods as dominant
suspension feeders in the shelf environment.
• At this time bivalves perfected their siphons to allow deeper
burrowing, and the exploitation of a greater range of
shallow marine environments.
 General characters of class Grastropoda
•Gastropod-means “Stomach Foot”
(Named because their foot is on the same side as
their stomach)
•Most shelled; single piece called Univalve
•All mollusks have a mantle
(Thin layer of cells that covers their internal
organs
Produces the shell in mollusks with a shell)
Class Gastropoda (“belly-foot”)
• snails, slugs, nudibranchs, limpets, cowrys,
abalones, etc.
• By far the largest and most diverse molluscan
class- over 80% of mollusc species are gastropods
• Marine benthic, pelagic, freshwater benthic,
terrestrial (mesic & xeric)
• Grazers or predators
• Prominent head, with well-developed sensory
structures (second only to cephalopods)
•Most have a shell, spirally-coiled to some
degree, that covers the main organs of the body.
•The muscular foot forms a base for the typical
snail, and is the animal's principal means of
locomotion. Many gastropods have tentacles
and eyes in the head region, along with some
sort of feeding apparatus.
•No general discussion of the Gastropoda is
complete unless the process of torsion is
mentioned. While in the larval stage, snails twist
the viscera in a counterclockwise direction to
bring the anus above the head.
Whorl: a turn of a
gastropod shell around a
central axis
Aperture: the opening to
a gastropod shell
Operculum: a structure
that some gastropods
have for closing their
aperture
 LIFE CYCLE
• Lower gastropods have separate sexes and
reproduce by spawning eggs into the water, where
they are fertilized with sperm and develop.
• The young larvae swim about, settle, and mature. In
advanced gastropods fertilization takes place
internally, and coverings are produced that protect
the eggs and young, which are sometimes also
guarded by the female. At times the whole
development process is internal.
 Gastropod Evolution
• In many ways the gastropod remains relatively true to the
‘blueprint’ original common ancestor for the Mollusca
discussed above.
• The early ancestral form of all molluscan groups may have
had a simple conical shell which protected the vital organs,
and which fed through the process of scavenging, while
moving by means of muscular contractions of its mantle
muscle. Gastropods reflect this.
• All three major gastropod groups occur in the present day,
but they have undergone periods of extinction, and re-
radiated in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic to fill a wide range of
niches, on land and in the sea.
 PALAEOENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS
• Bivalves and gastropods are of great value in
palaeoenvironmental analysis because of their
association with particular substrates.
• Both are almost benthonic (but some gastropods
are planktonic), and neritic.
• Most are limited by water depth, substrate, salinity
and oxygenation.
• Typical substrate preferences are infaunal, epifaunal
and vague (freely moving).
• Study of show substrate preferences and feeding
strategies are associated with certain
en-vironments. e.g., epifaunal suspension feeders
are associated with hostile, low-salinity or low-
oxygen environments,
Class Cephalopoda
 Class Cephalopoda
• The cephalopods have a large well developed head, with
large well developed eyes, and a set of prehensile arms that
usually bear rows of suction cups.
• Cephalopods are quick movers, swimming through the water
or crawling over the substrate. They also have a variety of
advanced defensive mechanisms, such as camouflaging
ability.
• Those cephalopods that bear hard parts are, of course, the
most interesting to paleontologists. The shell of the
Nautilus, and some related but extinct forms, is a planispiral,
mostly involute, coiled calcium carbonate cone divided by
calcareous walls (septa) into chambers.
• Shell-building cephalopods are known from the Cambrian to
the present. They are very important to biostratigraphers,
especially those working with Mesozoic rocks.
 Classification of Cephalopoda
Order Nautiloidea
• Nautiloids appeared first in the Cambrian as straight, conic
shells with the siphuncle running down the center of the
septa.
• Nautiloids were the most important cephalopods of the
early and middle Paleozoic and been declining in numbers
and species since the Ordovician. One genus, Nautilus, lives
today.
Order Ammonoidea
• These cephalopods arose in the Devonian directly from the
nautiloids through an intermediate stock similar to the
straight-shelled bactritid nautiloids. They are usually coiled
to some extent. The siphuncle of an ammonoid is usually
located along the margin of the shell, not in the center like
the nautiloids.
Order Teuthida
• These are the true squids, which have a fossil record
beginning in the Jurassic. They are elongate animals with
ten arms and a chitinous shell
Order Belemnitida
• These extinct animals resembled the squids in having
cylindrical bodies with a head and set of anterior arms.
• Well preserved belemnite shells have a chambered area
called the phragmocone, a rudimentary siphuncle, and a
massive rostrum that apparently acted as a
counterweight.
• Belemnites have been found in rocks as old as
Mississippian, but are most common in middle and late
Mesozoic deposits.
• They appear to have died out at the end of the
Cretaceous, but one very questionable Eocene form is
known.
Order Sepiida
• Sepiids include the cuttlefish, whose shell is well known to
parrots everywhere.
• Most are flattened dorso-ventrally and have ten arms and
eyes similar to squid.
• They usually live on the sea bottom and capture small
animals for food.
• Like the squids, sepiids can discharge clouds of ink to
confuse pursuers.
Order Octopodida
• The octopuses have a very scant fossil record, mainly, of
course because they rarely produce hard parts.
• An impression from the Upper Cretaceous is the earliest
known fossil of the group.
• Octopuses have eight arms (hence the name) and a
bulbous body.
 Three basic types Ammonoid suture patterns
Goniatictic
• Simple first-order lobes and saddles. This type of suture is
common in cephalopods from the late Devonian to the Permian,
occurring rarely in Triassic forms.
Ceratitic
• Lobes divided into second-order lobes and saddles. This type of
suture first appeared in the Early Mississippian and occurs in some
Pennsylvanian and Permian forms, but is the predominant pattern
in Triassic forms and occurs in a few Cretaceous species as well.
Ammonitic
• Lobes and saddles divided into second-order and sometimes third-
order lobes and saddles. Ammonoids began to diversify gradually
in the Devonian, but met near extinction at the close of the
Permian. In the Mesozoic though, they flowered into hundreds of
species with a wide array of shell types. At the close of the
Cretaceous the entire group went extinct
 Palaeoenvironmental Analysis
• Cephalopods are all fully marine, nektonic
organisms limited primarily by four factors:
• salinity; temperature; water depth; and food supply
• Salinity is of greatest importance, as they cannot
survive in brackish or highly saline waters.
• Water depth is a prime control in ectocochleate
cephalopods, as siphuncle and septa can rupture
with pressures associated with water depth.
• Most living endocochleates are restricted to shelf
areas where food sources are plentiful.
 Cephalopod Limiting factors

• Temperature - Cephalopods have broad ranges, from the

Equator to polar regions.
• Oxygenation - are commonest in oxygenated waters, but
as free-swimming nektonic organisms can inhabit upper
oxygenated levels above anoxic layer of a stratified water.
• Salinity - are limited to marine conditions with normal salinity
of 35%.
• Depth - inhabit a range of water depths, limited by their
implosion depth, as much as 900 m.
• Substrate - as nektonic organisms, unaffected by substrate, but
by their food source.
• Turbulence - are adapted to moderate to low turbulence levels.
• Cephalopod shells have been most commonly used in the
determination of drift patterns and shoreline indicators.