Ionoscopus

Ionoscopus is an extinct genus of marine halecomorph ray-finned fish from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous of Europe. It is the type genus of the order Ionoscopiformes, a diverse group of halecomorph fish from the Mesozoic that were distantly related to the modern bowfin.

Ionoscopus

Uncredited · Attribution · 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
IonoscopidaePBDB
Diet
carnivore, piscivorePBDB, for Amiiformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Amiiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Amiiformes

Time the record covers

At least 54 million years on record.

The record covers at least 154.8 Mya to 100.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 157.9 Mya to 93.9 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 3 of 7 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 2 of 7 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 7 occurrencesLate Cretaceous159–157 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences157–155 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences153–150 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences150–148 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences148–146 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences146–144 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences139–137 Mya — about 1 occurrence115–113 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences113–110 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences110–108 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences101–99 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences99–97 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences97–95 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences95–93 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences154.8 Mya100.5 Mya159 Mya93 Mya

7 occurrences of Ionoscopus on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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

Grünsandstein — 48.93°N, 11.83°EBückeberg — 52.26°N, 7.03°ESot de Chera — 41.12°N, 0.83°WLiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°ESolnhofen — 48.94°N, 8.41°E

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The named rock units Ionoscopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ionoscopus and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Ionoscopus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

84 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Ionoscopus, 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

6 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 Ionoscopus

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itIonoscopidae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Costa 1853