Hensodon spinosus

Hensodon is an extinct genus of marine pycnodont ray-finned fish known from the Late Cretaceous of the Middle East. It contains a single species, H. spinosus, that lived during the upper Cenomanian-aged Sannine Formation of what is now Lebanon. H. spinosus superficially resembled a marine angelfish with a massive head, and a very spiny pectoral girdle. Different specimens have different arrangements of the horn-like frontal spines, and these are potentially thought to represent sexual dimorphism within the species. One form has the horns arranged as a double-prong, assumed to be the male, and the other form, assumed to be the female, having the horns one after the other, like those of a rhinoceros.

Hensodon spinosus

Apokryltaros · 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
HensodonPBDB
Diet
durophage, carnivorePBDB, for Pycnodontiformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Pycnodontiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Pycnodontiformes

Time the record covers

At most 6.6 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 100.5 Mya and 93.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 2 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 2 occurrencesLate Cretaceous101–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–99 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences99–98 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences98–97 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences97–96 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences96–95 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95–94 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101 Mya93.4 Mya

2 occurrences of Hensodon spinosus on record, most of them in the Late 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

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.

Hensodon spinosus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Hensodon spinosus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

15 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Hensodon spinosus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Hensodon spinosus

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

No 3D scan of Hensodon spinosus 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 itHensodon through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Hennig 1907)