Lampanyctus alatus
Lampanyctus alatus is a species of lanternfish. It is found in parts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. It grows to 6.1 cm (2.4 in) standard length.

Uncredited · 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
- LampanyctusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Myctophiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Myctophiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Myctophiformes
Time the record covers
At most 2.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Lampanyctus alatus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Pliocene100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lampanyctus alatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lampanyctus alatus and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Lampanyctus alatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
40 taxa- Benthosema pterotum2 sites
- Diaphus chrysorhynchus2 sites
- Apogonidae1 site
- Arnoglossus1 site
- Bathycongrus1 site
- Benthosema duanformis1 site
- Benthosema parafibulatum1 site
- Bothidae1 site
- Bregmaceros1 site
- Ceratoscopelus1 site
- Ceratoscopelus townsendi1 site
- Coelorinchus1 site
- Congridae1 site
- Diaphus1 site
- Diaphus mollis1 site
- Diaphus nafpaktitisi1 site
- Diaphus perspicillatus1 site
- Diaphus problematicus1 site
- Diogenichthys1 site
- Engraulis japonicus1 site
- Exocoetidae1 site
- Gobiidae1 site
- Gonostomatidae1 site
- Gutingichthys changi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Lampanyctus alatus, 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- Early Pliocene otolith assemblages from the outer-shelf environment reveal the establishment of mesopelagic fish fauna over 3 million years ago in southwestern Taiwan1
- Lanternfish otoliths (Teleostei, Myctophidae) from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of Japan1
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 Lampanyctus alatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lampanyctus alatus 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
- 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 itLampanyctus through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Goode and Bean 1896)