Mesolepis

Mesolepis is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish that lived during the Tournaisian stage of the Mississippian epoch.

Mesolepis

Royal Society of Edinburgh · No restrictions · 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
MesolepidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Actinopterygii

Time the record covers

At least 25 million years on record.

The record covers at least 339.9 Mya to 314.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 346.7 Mya to 307 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 15 of 15 occurrencesCarboniferous347–346 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences346–345 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences345–343 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences343–342 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences342–341 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences341–339 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences324–323 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences323–321 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences321–320 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences320–319 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences319–317 Mya — about 4 occurrences317–316 Mya — about 1 occurrence316–314 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences314–313 Mya — about 1 occurrence313–312 Mya — about 1 occurrence312–310 Mya — about 1 occurrence310–309 Mya — about 1 occurrence309–308 Mya — about 1 occurrence308–306 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences339.9 Mya314.6 Mya347.5 Mya306.2 Mya

15 occurrences of Mesolepis on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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

15 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

Pennine Middle Coal Measures — 53.00°N, 2.16°WPennine Middle Coal Measures — 53.45°N, 2.75°WScottish Lower Coal Measures — 55.87°N, 3.88°WScottish Lower Coal Measures — 55.85°N, 3.83°WScottish Lower Coal Measures — 55.83°N, 3.79°WScottish Lower Coal Measures — 55.84°N, 3.73°WPennine Lower Coal Measures — 53.73°N, 1.58°WPennine Lower Coal Measures — 53.74°N, 2.18°WCalciferous Sandstone — 55.20°N, 3.07°WFaisceau de E'douard — 50.43°N, 2.80°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Mesolepis 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.

Mesolepis and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Mesolepis and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

42 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Mesolepis, 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 15 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 Mesolepis

Credit
Royal Society of Edinburgh
Licence
No restrictions
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Mesolepis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access 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 itMesolepidae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Young 1866