Ophiodon elongatus
The lingcod or ling cod is a fish of the greenling family Hexagrammidae. Despite its name, the lingcod is neither a cod nor a ling. It is also known as the buffalo cod, cultus cod, or Buckethead. It is the only extant member of the genus Ophiodon. A slightly larger, extinct species, Ophiodon ozymandias, is known from fossils from the Late Miocene of Southern California.

Unknown author Unknown author · 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- Also called
- lingcodPBDB
- Sits inside
- OphiodonPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
3 occurrences of Ophiodon elongatus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Ophiodon elongatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ophiodon elongatus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Ophiodon elongatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
105 taxa- Sebastes3 sites
- Cymatogaster aggregata2 sites
- Embiotocidae2 sites
- Engraulis mordax2 sites
- Enhydra lutris2 sites
- Eumetopias jubatus2 sites
- Galeorhinus galeus2 sites
- Genyonemus lineatus2 sites
- Leptocottus armatus2 sites
- Microgadus proximus2 sites
- Porichthys notatus2 sites
- Raja2 sites
- Rhacochilus vacca2 sites
- Semicossyphus pulcher2 sites
- Seriphus politus2 sites
- Sphyraena argentea2 sites
- Zalophus californianus2 sites
- Allosmerus elongatus1 site
- Alopias vulpinus1 site
- Ammodytes hexapterus1 site
- Amphistichus rhodoterus1 site
- Anarrhichthys ocellatus1 site
- Anas crecca1 site
- Arctocephalus townsendi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Ophiodon elongatus, 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
3 references- Investigations at an eroded shell midden reveal direct evidence for fur seal hunting and diverse subsistence strategies on Late Holocene Santa Rosa (Wima) Island, California1
- Preliminary List of the Marine Fishes and Other Vertebrate Remains from the Late Pleistocene Palos Verdes Sand Formation at Costa Mesa, Orange County, California1
- Fish remains, mostly otoliths and teeth, from the Palos Verdes Sand (Late Pleistocene) of California1
Each of the 3 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 Ophiodon elongatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Unknown author Unknown author
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ophiodon elongatus 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, “Lingcod”
- 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 itOphiodon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Girard 1854