Lepidopus
Lepidopus is a genus of cutlassfishes.

G.M. · 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
- TrichiuridaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 31 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 11.7 ka.
51 occurrences of Lepidopus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
51 occurrences- Early Cretaceous2%
- Late Cretaceous2%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene3%
- Oligocene14%
- Miocene58%
- Pliocene15%
- Pleistocene5%
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
8 formations
- Finikia Formation1
- Pakhna Formation1
- Raz-el-Ain Formation1
- Pshekha Horizon Formation1
- Makrilia Formation1
- Bissex Hill Formation1
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The named rock units Lepidopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 43 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lepidopus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lepidopus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
896 taxa- Maurolicus muelleri24 sites
- Bregmaceros albyi17 sites
- Syngnathus albyi15 sites
- Lesueurigobius10 sites
- Belone9 sites
- Gobius9 sites
- Otolithus labiatus9 sites
- Trachurus9 sites
- Arnoglossus8 sites
- Deltentosteus8 sites
- Diaphus taaningi8 sites
- Lobianchia dofleini8 sites
- Myctophum dorsale8 sites
- Paralepis albyi8 sites
- Physiculus huloti8 sites
- Sardina8 sites
- Spratelloides gracilis8 sites
- Argentina sphyraena7 sites
- Dentex7 sites
- Diaphus7 sites
- Diaphus cavallonis7 sites
- Gadiculus argenteus7 sites
- Hoplobrotula7 sites
- Hygophum hygomi7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 43 sites for Lepidopus, 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
35 references- Données récentes sur Les téléostéens du Miocène et du Pliocéne d'Italie6
- Fish otoliths from the pre-evaporitic (Early Messinian) sediments of northern Italy: their stratigraphic and palaeobiogeographic significance4
- Beiträge sur Kenntniss der fossilen Fische der Karpathen4
- Amnissos: un gisement clé pour la connaissance de l'ichthyofaune du Pliocène supérieur de Crète3
- Otolithes de poissons du paléocanyon de saubrigues (chattien à langhien), aquitaine méridionale, France2
- Analyse séquentielle d'un nouveau gisement de poissons fossiles du Messinien marin diatomitique : Masseria il Salto près de Caltagirone (Province de Catane, Sicile)2
- Synopsis des poissons tertiaires de Licata2
- The Rauenberg fossil Lagerstätte (Baden-Württemberg, Germany): A window into early Oligocene marine and coastal ecosystems of Central Europe1
- A new Pliocene marine fish fauna from north-western Cyprus, with a micropalaeontological account1
- New taxonomic synopses and revision of the scombroid fishes (Scombroidei, Perciformes), including billfishes, from the Cenozoic of territories of the former USSR1
- Paléobiodiversité et paléoenvironnements: l’exemple des gisements de poissons téléostéens du Messinien préévaporitique d’Oran et du bassin du Chélif (Algérie)1
- Fossil fishes from the Serravallian (Middle Miocene) of Torricella Peligna, Italy1
Each of the 51 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. 23 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Lepidopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- G.M.
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Lepidopus altifrons · UF:Fish:171863
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lepidopus”
- 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 itTrichiuridae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gouan 1770