Neritilia (Gastropoda, Neritopsina, Neritiliidae): pushing back the timeline

A new species of the freshwater to brackish neritopsine gastropod genus Neritilia is here recognised as the earliest known representative of the Neritiliidae and is described as Neritilia lawsoni sp. nov. This discovery is important as it provides fossil evidence of the existence in the early Eocene, some 55 Ma, of a family which has been estimated to have originated in the early Cretaceous but was, until now, unknown as a fossil before the late middle Eocene, approximately 42 Ma. This is also the first record of the family from England.