Blennius
Blennius is a genus of combtooth blennies in the family Blenniidae. Its members include Blennius ocellaris, the butterfly blenny.

Etrusko25 · 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
- BlenniidaePBDB
- 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 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 129 ka.
13 occurrences of Blennius on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
13 occurrences- Eocene38%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene20%
- Pliocene8%
- Pleistocene31%
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
4 formations
- Moodys Branch Formation2
- Lindos Bay Formation1
- “upper” Lisbon Formation1
- Piney Point Formation · Claiborne Group1
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The named rock units Blennius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Blennius and its relatives
EoceneWhere Blennius and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
215 taxa- Deltentosteus6 sites
- Gobius6 sites
- Lesueurigobius6 sites
- Atherina5 sites
- Ceratoscopelus maderensis5 sites
- Haemulon5 sites
- Muraena conger5 sites
- Pagellus5 sites
- Preophidion5 sites
- Protanago sector5 sites
- Pythonichthys5 sites
- Sciaena5 sites
- Symmetrosulcus5 sites
- Trachinus5 sites
- Aphia4 sites
- Dentex4 sites
- Gnathophis4 sites
- Gobius niger4 sites
- Latilus4 sites
- Protanago nonsector4 sites
- Pseudophichthys4 sites
- Sparus elegantulus4 sites
- Spicara smaris4 sites
- Antigonia3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Blennius, 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
8 references- Middle and late Eocene fish otoliths from the eastern and southern USA5
- Pleistocene fish otoliths from the Mediterranean Basin: a synthesis2
- At the crossroads: early Miocene marine fishes of the proto-Mediterranean Sea1
- The Zanclean marine fish fauna and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a coastal marine setting in the eastern Mediterranean1
- Pleistocene marine fish invasions and paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the eastern Mediterranean1
- Fossil marine fishes and the ʻLago Mareʼ event: Has the Mediterranean ever transformed into a brackish lake?1
- Connectivity controls on the late Miocene eastern Mediterranean fish fauna1
- Otolithes de poissons du Pleistocene inferieur (Santernien) de Morrona (Sud est de Pisa)1
Each of the 13 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 content2
Picture of Blennius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Etrusko25
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- MTSUichthyology
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Blennius”
- 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 itBlenniidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758