Known from fossil evidence about 400,000 years old, it is one of many glacial relict species that remain in the Driftless Area, a glacier-eroded plateau that now makes up parts of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

The algific talus slope habitat that harbors the snail is a landscape cooled by air and water emerging from masses of subterranean ice.

[5] Other causes include loss of habitat to logging, quarrying, livestock, pesticides, the construction of roads,[3] and predation by shrews.

[1] The 775-acre (3.14 km2) Driftless Area National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1989 to protect native flora and fauna, including endangered and threatened species such as the Iowa Pleistocene snail.

[4] Rare plants include the northern blue monkshood (Aconitum noveboracense), which thrives in the same cool talus habitat as the snail.