Batillariidae

Batillariidae, common name batillariids or mudcreepers, are a family of marine, cerithioidean gastropod molluscs in thesuperfamily Cerithioidea.

[4] Batillarids are abundant on sandy mudflats, and sometimes on rocky shores, on continental margins in the warm-temperate to tropical regions of the northwestern Pacific Ocean, Australasia and the Americas.

[4] Batillariids appeared in the Late Cretaceous or Palaeocene, and the extinct genera Pyrazopsis, Vicinocerithium and Granulolabium became diverse in the Tethyan realm before the group disappeared from Europe at the end of the Miocene.

The Batillariidae s. s. reached Australia and New Zealand by the Late Oligocene, and the genera Pyrazus, Velacumantus and Zeacumantus still survive in this refugium of Tethyan fauna.

[4] Two lineages, Batillaria and the extinct Tateiwaia, migrated north to China and Japan in the Early Miocene, to establish the present disjunct distribution of this relictual group in southern Australasia and the Oriental region.