Caproidae
Caproidae, or boarfishes, are a small family of marine fishes with a single extant species, the boarfish, native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, as well as a few other extinct species and genera.

Vassil · CC0 · 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
- PercomorphariaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 45 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 1.8 Mya.
31 occurrences of Caproidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
31 occurrences- Eocene3%
- Oligocene37%
- Miocene44%
- Pliocene12%
- Pleistocene5%
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
- Raz-el-Ain Formation2
- Ebelsberg Formation1
- Kuma Horizon Formation1
- Menelite Formation1
- Pshekha Horizon Formation1
- Makrilia Formation1
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The named rock units Caproidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Caproidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Caproidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
820 taxa- Maurolicus muelleri13 sites
- Bregmaceros albyi10 sites
- Capros aper9 sites
- Capros8 sites
- Gadiculus8 sites
- Spratelloides gracilis8 sites
- Syngnathidae7 sites
- Syngnathus7 sites
- Trachurus7 sites
- Lepidopus6 sites
- Syngnathus albyi6 sites
- Alosa elongata5 sites
- Anenchelum glarisianum5 sites
- Boops5 sites
- Centriscus5 sites
- Etrumeus5 sites
- Micromesistius poutassou5 sites
- Myctophum licatae5 sites
- Sardina crassa5 sites
- Solea5 sites
- Trachurus trachurus5 sites
- Vinciguerria5 sites
- Arnoglossus sauvagei4 sites
- Capros radobojanus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Caproidae, 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
18 references- Fauna Fosila din Oligocenul de la Piatra Neamt5
- Paléobiodiversité et paléoenvironnements: l’exemple des gisements de poissons téléostéens du Messinien préévaporitique d’Oran et du bassin du Chélif (Algérie)4
- Biogeography and climatology of Pliocene and Messinian fossil fish of eastern-central Italy3
- Messinian marine fish communities of the Mediterranean Sea3
- Données récentes sur Les téléostéens du Miocène et du Pliocéne d'Italie2
- Die fossile fauna und flora aus dem Oligozan von Suslanesti-Muscel in Rumanien2
- An exceptional concentration of marine fossils associated with wood-fall in the Terhagen Member (Boom Formation; Schelle, Belgium), Rupelian of the southern North Sea Basin1
- Discovery of the oldest Gobius (Teleostei, Gobiiformes) from a marine ecosystem of Early Miocene age1
- Synopsis of fossil fish fauna from the Hermanowa locality (Rupelian; Central Paratethys; Poland): current state of knowledge1
- The Pesciara-Monte Postale Fossil-Lagerstätte: 2. Fishes and other vertebrates1
- Fish otoliths from the pre-evaporitic (Early Messinian) sediments of northern Italy: their stratigraphic and palaeobiogeographic significance1
- Oceanographic conditions as a trigger for the formation of an Early Miocene (Aquitanian) Konservat-Lagerstätte in the Central Paratethys Sea1
Each of the 31 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. 6 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 Caproidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vassil
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Caproidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Caproidae”
- 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 itPercomorpharia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.