Ictalurus punctatus

The channel catfish, known informally as the "channel cat", is a species of catfish native to North America. They are North America's most abundant catfish species, and the official state fish of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Tennessee. The channel catfish is the most fished species of catfish in the United States, with around 8 million anglers angling them per year. The popularity of channel catfish for food has contributed to the rapid expansion of this species' aquaculture in the United States. It has also been widely introduced to Europe, Asia and South America, and many countries consider it an invasive species.

Ictalurus punctatus

USFWS Mountain Prairie · Public Domain · 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
IctalurusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Siluriformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Siluriformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Siluriformes
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Siluriformes

Time the record covers

At least 20 million years on record.

The record covers at least 20.45 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.

Oligocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 7 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesPleistocene — about 4 of 7 occurrencesPleistocene24–23 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.6–785 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence785 ka–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences20.45 Mya11.7 ka23.5 Mya0 Mya

7 occurrences of Ictalurus punctatus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

7 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

5 formations

Valentine — 42.78°N, 100.03°WFleming — 31.00°N, 93.40°WKingsdown — 37.04°N, 100.50°WCrooked Creek — 37.20°N, 100.30°WShuler — 32.71°N, 96.71°W

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The named rock units Ictalurus punctatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ictalurus punctatus and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Ictalurus punctatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

370 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Ictalurus punctatus, 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

7 references

Each of the 7 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 Ictalurus punctatus

Credit
USFWS Mountain Prairie
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ictalurus punctatus was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource 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 itIctalurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Rafinesque 1818)