Gryphaeidae

Gryphaeidae
Temporal range: Early Triassic to Recent [1]
Specimens of Gryphaea articulata from the Jurassic of France
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Bivalvia
Order: Ostreida
Superfamily: Ostreoidea
Family: Gryphaeidae
Vyalov, 1936
Genera

See text

Praeexogyra hebridica from the Frome Clay (Bathonian, Middle Jurassic) of Langton Herring, Dorset, England.
Liostrea strigilecula from the Carmel Formation (Middle Jurassic) of southwestern Utah.

The Gryphaeidae, common name the foam oysters or honeycomb oysters, are a family of marine bivalve mollusks. This family of bivalves is very well represented in the fossil record, however the number of living species is very few.

All species have shells cemented to a substrate. Shells are considered brittle, inequivalve, with the left, lower (cemented) valve convex and the right (upper, non-cemented) valve flat or slightly concave.[2]

  1. ^ Michael Hautmann; David Ware; Hugo Bucher (2017). "Geologically oldest oysters were epizoans on Early Triassic ammonoids". Journal of Molluscan Studies. 83 (3): 253–260. doi:10.1093/mollus/eyx018.
  2. ^ Jocelyne Martin; Gérard Paulmier (3 February 2011). Les invertébrés marins du golfe de Gascogne à la Manche orientale. Editions Quae. p. 82. ISBN 978-2-7592-0107-5.