Eosemionotus
Eosemionotus is an extinct genus of prehistoric marine macrosemiid ray-finned fish from the Middle Triassic. It was a speciose genus known from throughout Europe, including formations of the Muschelkalk.

Ghedoghedo · 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
- MacrosemiidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 4.9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 244.4 Mya to 239.48 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 237 Mya.
34 occurrences of Eosemionotus on record, most of them in the Middle Triassic. 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
34 occurrences- Middle Triassic100%
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
9 formations
- Meride Formation9
- Cassina Formation5
- Vossenveld Formation4
- Muschelkalk Formation2
- Besano Formation2
- Strelovec Formation1
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The named rock units Eosemionotus 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.
Eosemionotus and its relatives
Middle TriassicWhere Eosemionotus and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.
Found in the same rock
140 taxa- Saurichthys9 sites
- Colobodus4 sites
- Luganoia lepidosteoides4 sites
- Perledovatus nothosomoides4 sites
- Ptycholepis barboi4 sites
- Actinopterygii3 sites
- Archaeosemionotus3 sites
- Boreosomus3 sites
- Caturus3 sites
- Ctenognathichthys3 sites
- Gyrolepis3 sites
- Luganoia3 sites
- Peltopleurus3 sites
- Peltopleurus rugosus3 sites
- Peripeltopleurus3 sites
- Perleidus altolepis3 sites
- Placopleurus3 sites
- Saurichthys (Costasaurichthys) costasquamosus3 sites
- Saurichthys curionii3 sites
- Ticinolepis longaeva3 sites
- Brevisaurichthys osseus2 sites
- Cleithrolepis2 sites
- Colobodus bassani2 sites
- Eoeugnathus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Eosemionotus, 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
11 references- Taxonomy and phylogeny of Eosemionotus Stolley, 1920 (Neopterygii: Ginglymodi) from the Middle Triassic of Europe13
- A new species of Eosemionotus (Holostei, Macrosemiidae) from the Anisian (Middle Triassic) of Winterswijk, the Netherlands4
- New holostean fishes (Actinopterygii: Neopterygii) from the Middle Triassic of the Monte San Giorgio (Canton Ticino, Switzerland)4
- An overview of the Middle Triassic actinopterygians from Alcover, Mont-ral and El Pinetell (Catalonia, Spain)4
- The kingdom of Tethys. The fossilized world of Triassic vertebrates from the Kamniško-Savinjske Alps2
- Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Ganoiden des deutschen Muschelkalks2
- A hiatus obscures the early evolution of modern lineages of bony fishes1
- Eosemionotus ceresiensis sp. nov., a new semionotiform fish (Actinopterygii, Halecostomi) from the Middle Triassic of Monte San Giorgio (Southern Switzerland)1
- Wirbeltierreste aus dem Mittleren Muschelkalk (Trias) von Göttingen, West-Deutschland1
- Paleontologia y paleoecolgia de los yacimientos fosiliferos del Muschelkalk superior entre Alcover y Mont-Ral (Montañas de Prades, Provincia de Tarragona)1
- La faune Ichthyologique du Muschelkalk de la Catalogne1
Each of the 34 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 Eosemionotus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Eosemionotus 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
- 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 itMacrosemiidae through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stolley 1919