Amphiperca

Amphiperca is an extinct genus of freshwater percomorph ray-finned fish that lived from the early to middle Eocene of Europe. It has one known species, A. multiformis, known from the famous Messel Pit of Germany. Indeterminate remains are known from concurrent formations in Occitanie, France. It was a predatory fish that is known to have fed on Thaumaturus and Rhenanoperca.

Amphiperca

H. Zell · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
PerciformesPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Perciformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Perciformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Perciformes

Time the record covers

At most 7.1 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 48.07 Mya and 41.03 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 7 of 7 occurrencesEocene48–48 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences48–48 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences48–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–45 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences45–44 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences44–44 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences44–44 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences44–43 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences48.6 Mya40.5 Mya

7 occurrences of Amphiperca on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

7 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.

Amphiperca and its relatives

Eocene

Where Amphiperca and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

72 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Amphiperca, 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

3 references

Each of the 7 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. 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 Amphiperca

Credit
H. Zell
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itPerciformes through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Weitzel 1933