Notes on the Fauna of the Chipola Formation - XXXI on the Occurrence of the Genus Coralliophaga (Mollusca:Bivalvia)

Abstract

In 1898, Dall published figures of a shell from the "Ballast Point silex beds" that he named Coralliophaga elegans (pl. 25, figs. 2, 2a). In 1903 (p. 1499) he described the species as C. elegantula, noting that the specific name elegans had been used by Deshayes in 1824, and listing the occurrences as "Upper Oligocene of the Chipola marl, Chipola River, Florida, and of the silex beds at Ballast Point, Tampa Bay." Julia Gardner, however, did not mention this name in her monograph of the fauna of the Alum Bluff Group (1926-1950) and Mansfield in his "Mollusks of the Tampa and Suwannee Limestones of Florida," states (1937, p. 228): "Although Dall reports this species in the Chipola formation, I have not seen it from that locality." Insofar as I have been able to ascertain, this erroneous citation is the only mention of the genus Coralliophaga in the Chipola fauna.