Alopiidae

Thomas Alexander · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LamniformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At least 110 million years on record.
The record covers at least 110.1 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 113.2 Mya to 0 Mya.
263 occurrences of Alopiidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
263 occurrences- Early Cretaceous2%
- Late Cretaceous25%
- Eocene28%
- Oligocene8%
- Miocene30%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene2%
- Holoceneunder 1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
107 formations
- Gehannam Formation13
- Chilcatay Formation6
- Birket Qarun Formation5
- Navesink Formation · Monmouth Group5
- Marshalltown Formation · Matawan Group4
- Qasr el-Sagha Formation4
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The named rock units Alopiidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 83 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 73 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Alopiidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Alopiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
2,936 taxa- Hemipristis serra47 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis42 sites
- Paranomotodon angustidens41 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus39 sites
- Carcharhinus38 sites
- Otodus megalodon38 sites
- Dasyatis37 sites
- Myliobatis34 sites
- Alopias33 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata32 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus32 sites
- Squatina30 sites
- Archaeolamna kopingensis29 sites
- Squalicorax kaupi29 sites
- Alopias superciliosus27 sites
- Carcharhinus priscus25 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus24 sites
- Rhizoprionodon24 sites
- Aetobatus23 sites
- Rhinoptera23 sites
- Alopias vulpinus22 sites
- Carcharias22 sites
- Scyliorhinus22 sites
- Alopias exigua21 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 204 sites for Alopiidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
140 references- Shark and ray faunas in the Middle and Late Eocene of the Fayum Area, Egypt21
- Paralopias follioti n. gen. n. sp., un nouvel Alopiidae Bonaparte, 1838 (Elasmobranchii, Lamniformes) provenant du Serravallien (Miocène Moyen) de Salles (Gironde, France)9
- Records of elasmobranchian teeth in the Bartonian of the northern Caucasus (Russia) and Crimea (Ukraine)6
- Biology, dental morphology and taxonomy of lamniform sharks from the Campanian of the Kristianstad Basin, Sweden6
- Inventaire des Élasmobranches (requins, raies, chimères) des dépôts molassiques du Sud-Luberon (Miocène supérieur)5
- Nouvelle faunes de sélaciens (Elasmobranchii, Neoselachii) de l'Eocène moyen des Landes (Sud-Ouest, France). Implication dans la connaissance des communautés de sélaciens d'eau profondes5
- Fossiles de Belgique. Dents de Requins et de Raies du Tertiare de la Belgique5
- Les sélaciens des terrains néocrétacés and paléocènes de Belgique and des contrées limitrophes. Eléments d'une biostratigraphie intercontinentale5
- Chondrichthyan and osteichthyan paleofaunas from the Cretaceous (Late Maastrichtian) Fox Hills Formation of North Dakota, USA: paleoecology, paleogeography, and extinction4
- Late Miocene chondrichthyans from Lago Bayano, Panama: Functional diversity, environment and biogeography4
- A new Early Miocene (Aquitanian) Elasmobranchii assemblage from the la Guajira Peninsula, Colombia4
- Structure and ichthyofauna of the upper part of Eocene sediments in Belogorsk area (Crimea)4
Each of the 263 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 128 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Alopiidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Thomas Alexander
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alopiidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLamniformes through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonaparte 1838