Malacanthus
Malacanthus is a small genus of tilefishes, family Malacanthidae. They are native to the western Atlantic Ocean and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Uncredited · 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
- MalacanthidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 15.98 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
2 occurrences of Malacanthus on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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 occurrencesThese 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 Malacanthus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Malacanthus and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Malacanthus and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
36 taxa- Amblyacrum roemeri1 site
- Anguilla1 site
- Argentina1 site
- Atlantoraja cecilae1 site
- Capros1 site
- Carcharias contortidens1 site
- Cocculina reineckei1 site
- Coeloma rupeliense1 site
- Coris sigismundi1 site
- Cupressinoxylon1 site
- Euspira achatensis1 site
- Foraminifera1 site
- Gaidropsarus pilleri1 site
- Isurolamna gracilis1 site
- Keasius parvus1 site
- Lophius gibbosus1 site
- Myoxocephalus primas1 site
- Nucula duchasteli1 site
- Odostomia acutiuscula1 site
- Otarionichthys occultus1 site
- Palaeogadus1 site
- Palimphemus anceps1 site
- Palliolum1 site
- Palliolum delheidi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Malacanthus, 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- An exceptional concentration of marine fossils associated with wood-fall in the Terhagen Member (Boom Formation; Schelle, Belgium), Rupelian of the southern North Sea Basin1
- Blanquillos (Teleostei, Malacanthidae) from the Middle Miocene of St. Margarethen in Burgenland, Austria: Palaeoenvironmental implications1
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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Malacanthus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Malacanthus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Malacanthus”
- 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 itMalacanthidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Poey 1861