Ammodytidae

A sand lance or sandlance is a ray-finned fish belonging to the family Ammodytidae. Several species of sand lances are commonly known as "sand eels", though they are not related to true eels. Another variant name is launce, and all names of the fish are references to its slender body and pointed snout. The family name means "sand burrower", which describes the sand lance's habit of burrowing into sand to avoid tidal currents.

Ammodytidae

Mandy Lindeberg, NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/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
UranoscopiformesPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes

Time the record covers

At least 40 million years on record.

The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Eocene — about 1 of 19 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 4 of 19 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 4 of 19 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 19 occurrencesPleistocene — about 8 of 19 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences46–44 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences44–42 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences33–31 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences31–29 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences29–28 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences28–26 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences11–9.8 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences9.8–8.2 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences8.2–6.5 Mya — about 1 occurrence6.5–4.9 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.9–3.3 Mya — about 2 occurrences1.6–0 Mya — about 8 occurrences41.03 Mya129 ka49 Mya0 Mya

19 occurrences of Ammodytidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

19 occurrences

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

8 formations

Port Orford — 42.81°N, 124.53°WYokosuka — 35.26°N, 139.72°EYorktown — 35.36°N, 76.82°WMenelite — 49.93°N, 22.02°EBassevelde Sand — 51.08°N, 4.35°EElk River — 42.81°N, 124.81°WMiyata — 35.19°N, 39.65°ETimms Point Silt — 33.73°N, 118.28°W

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The named rock units Ammodytidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ammodytidae and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Ammodytidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

926 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Ammodytidae, and this reads all of them. 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

16 references

Each of the 19 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. 4 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 Ammodytidae

Credit
Mandy Lindeberg, NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ammodytidae 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.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itUranoscopiformes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.