Vitta picta (Férussac, 1823)

Taxonomy

Snail

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Order: Neritopsina
Family: Neritidae
Genus: Vitta
Species: Vitta picta
Author Citation (Férussac, 1823)

Geological Time Scale

Eon: Phanerozoic
Era: Cenozoic
Period: Neogene
Sub Period: None
Epoch: Miocene
International Age: Langhian

Stratigraphy

unknown formation
Florianer Schichten

Provenance

Collector: Franz Bernhard
Date Collected: 05/22/2017
Acquired by: Field Collection

Dimensions

Height: 6 mm

Location

Höllerkogel Hill
St. Josef
Styria
Austria

• 3644
• austria
• badenian
• eastern alps
• florianer schichte
• langhian
• miocene
• styria
• styrian basin
• vitta picta

Comments

Second photo: About 50 individuals of the snail Vitta picta in different states of weathering, but most of them are still glossy and show their color patterns. The gloss is natural, no coating or something else applied, only washed. The color pattern is strongly variable between individuals. Note that also the outline is quite variable, which is typical for this species. Field of view is 40 mm, largest gastropod is about 6 mm high, so this snails are really small. This is a "multi-genus-species" and was/is assigned also to the following genera: Theodoxus, Agapilia, Clithon, Nerita, Neritina. According to Fossilworks, this species was an epifaunal omnivore-grazer and went extinct 12.7 million years ago.

First photo is perhaps the largest and one of the best preserved gastropods of this lot in two views. Height is about 6 mm. It is not perfectly preserved; some  parts of the outer shell layer, and hence the color pattern, is missing in the right view. Some parts of the shell along the aperture on the right side are also missing. Outline is quite typical, somewhere in the middle between nearly globular and somewhat cylindrical with a constriction in the middle.

Exact locality is Höllerkogel-21 in my own documentation. This relatively large outcrop contains predominately the mud snail, Granulolabium bicinctum, and V. picta. Unfortunatelly, most of the shells are strongly weathered or even completely dissolved. Höllerkogel-21 is about 5 m stratigraphically higher then Höllerkogel-18 and located just upslope of Höllerkogel-18.

The sediments in the area belong to the "Florianer Schichten", which are part of the western Styrian basin at the eastern margin of the Alps. The "Florianer Schichten" are about 15 Ma old (Langhian, or "Badenian" in Paratethys stratigraphic terms).

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