Dactylopterus
Dactylopterus is a genus of fish belonging into the family Dactylopteridae. It contains two species, an extant species, Dactylopterus volitans and the fossil species Dactylopterus decrozi from the Miocene of Panama.

Johnmartindavies · 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
- DactylopteridaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At most 3.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 1.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Dactylopterus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene91%
- Pleistocene9%
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.
Dactylopterus and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Dactylopterus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
99 taxa- Bregmaceros albyi5 sites
- Trachurus5 sites
- Boops4 sites
- Lepidopus4 sites
- Maurolicus muelleri4 sites
- Spratelloides gracilis4 sites
- Alutera3 sites
- Belone3 sites
- Capros aper3 sites
- Centriscus3 sites
- Engraulis3 sites
- Gadella3 sites
- Gadiculus3 sites
- Hygophum3 sites
- Hyporhamphus3 sites
- Micromesistius poutassou3 sites
- Pomolobus3 sites
- Scomber3 sites
- Syngnathidae3 sites
- Syngnathus3 sites
- Argentina sphyraena2 sites
- Arnoglossus laterna2 sites
- Bothus2 sites
- Brama2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Dactylopterus, 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
4 references- Biogeography and climatology of Pliocene and Messinian fossil fish of eastern-central Italy2
- A new Pliocene marine fish fauna from north-western Cyprus, with a micropalaeontological account1
- Amnissos: un gisement clé pour la connaissance de l'ichthyofaune du Pliocène supérieur de Crète1
- Données récentes sur Les téléostéens du Miocène et du Pliocéne d'Italie1
Each of the 5 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 Dactylopterus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Johnmartindavies
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dactylopterus 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 itDactylopteridae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.