Gyronchus
Gyronchus is an extinct genus of prehistoric marine pycnodont fish from the Jurassic. This genus is currently treated as a wastebasket taxon, with several genera such as Macromesodon and Turbomesodon being split out of it. The type species, G. oblongus Agassiz, 1844 is known from the Bathonian-aged Stonesfield Slate of England. Another apparent freshwater species, G. dumblei is known from the Early Cretaceous-aged Paluxy Formation of Texas, US and the Antlers Formation of Oklahoma, but is more likely a member of Turbomesodon.

User:Haplochromis · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- PycnodontiformesPBDB
- Diet
- durophage, carnivorePBDB, for Pycnodontiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Pycnodontiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Pycnodontiformes
Time the record covers
At most 20 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 119.57 Mya and 100.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Gyronchus on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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- Early Cretaceous100%
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
- Paluxy Formation1
- Antlers Formation · Trinity Group1
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The named rock units Gyronchus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Gyronchus and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Gyronchus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
51 taxa- Astroconodon denisoni2 sites
- Holoclemensia texana2 sites
- Meristodonoides butleri2 sites
- Acrocanthosaurus1 site
- Albanerpeton arthridion1 site
- Amiidae1 site
- Anguidae1 site
- Anguimorpha1 site
- Anura1 site
- Atokasaurus metarsiodon1 site
- Atokatheridium boreni1 site
- Aves1 site
- Bernissartia1 site
- Callodus coronatus1 site
- Caudata1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Deinonychus1 site
- Deinonychus antirrhopus1 site
- Discoglossidae1 site
- Glyptops1 site
- Goniopholididae1 site
- Hybodus1 site
- Kermackia texana1 site
- Lacertilia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Gyronchus, 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- Additions to the vertebrate fauna of the Antlers Formation (Lower Cretaceous), southeastern Oklahoma1
- Early Cretaceous (Comanchean) vertebrates of central Texas1
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 Gyronchus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Gyronchus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gyronchus”
- 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 itPycnodontiformes through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1839