Branchiostegus

Branchiostegus is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes, tilefishes, belonging to the family Malacanthidae. They are found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean through the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific Ocean. Here they create burrows in soft substrates in the comparatively deep waters of the continental shelf and slope.

Branchiostegus

Totti · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
BranchisteginaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes

Time the record covers

At least 33 million years on record.

The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences46–44 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences44–43 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42–40 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences7.4–6.0 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences6.0–4.5 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41.03 Mya7.246 Mya48.9 Mya4.5 Mya

2 occurrences of Branchiostegus 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

2 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

2 formations

Raz-el-Ain — 35.71°N, 0.64°WMiretrain Marl — 43.57°N, 1.11°W

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The named rock units Branchiostegus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Branchiostegus and its relatives

Eocene

Where Branchiostegus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

133 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Branchiostegus, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 Branchiostegus

Credit
Totti
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Branchiostegus was found in Sketchfab.

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

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 itBranchisteginae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rafinesque 1815