Coelacanthus granulatus

Coelacanthus, from Ancient Greek κοῖλος (koîlos), meaning "hollow", and ἄκανθα (ákantha), meaning "spine", is a genus of extinct marine coelacanths known from the late Permian period. It was the first genus of coelacanths described, about a century before the discovery of the extant coelacanth Latimeria. The order Coelacanthiformes is named after it.

Coelacanthus granulatus

Ghedoghedo · 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
CoelacanthusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Coelacanthidae
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Coelacanthidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes

Time the record covers

At most 5.8 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 259.857 Mya and 254.14 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Permian — about 14 of 14 occurrencesPermian260–260 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences260–259 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences259–259 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences259–259 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences259–259 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences259–259 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences259–258 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences258–258 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences258–258 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences258–258 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences258–257 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences257–257 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences257–257 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences257–257 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences257–257 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences257–256 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences256–256 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences256–256 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences256–256 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences256–255 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255–255 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255–255 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255–255 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255–255 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255–254 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences254–254 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences260.4 Mya253.6 Mya

14 occurrences of Coelacanthus granulatus on record, most of them in the Permian. 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

14 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

3 formations

Kupferschiefer — 52.23°N, 7.96°EKupferschiefer — 50.97°N, 10.01°ERaisby — 54.69°N, 1.52°WRaisby — 54.63°N, 1.63°WRaisby — 54.93°N, 1.41°WZechstein — 51.23°N, 8.89°E

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

Coelacanthus granulatus and its relatives

Permian

Where Coelacanthus granulatus and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.

Found in the same rock

28 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Coelacanthus granulatus, 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

6 references

Each of the 14 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 Coelacanthus granulatus

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Coelacanthus granulatus 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 itCoelacanthus through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1839