Gastropoda
Modern Day Gastropods
The Class Gastropoda includes sea and freshwater snails and slugs, as well as limpets. Today, there are 62,000+ described living species.
In the Museum Collections
View specimen list here.
Total gastropod specimens: 1400+
Total identified species: 146
Specimens from Arkansas: 635
Identified species from Arkansas: 12
Fossil Record
Fossil evidence suggests gastropods first appeared over 500 million years ago. Common gastropod fossils include ammonites and nautiloids.
Examples of vertically- and horizontally-coiled shelled gastropod specimens (UA Museum); Saratoga Chalk Formation (Clark County, AR), Upper Cretaceous (100.5 – 66 million YA). Map to the right indicates the county where these specimens were found.
Image Credits:
- Stako. Land snail. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
- Viglas, Taso. Bullina lineata. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.
- Oberg, Danielle. Arkansas map.
- Oberg, Danielle. U of A Museum paleontological specimens.
