Orectolobus

Orectolobus is a genus of carpet sharks in the family Orectolobidae. They are commonly known as wobbegongs, although this name also applies to the other members of the family. They are found in shallow temperate and tropical waters of the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean, chiefly around Australia and Indonesia, although one species occurs as far north as Japan.

Orectolobus

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
OrectolobidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Orectolobiformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Orectolobiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Orectolobiformes

Time the record covers

At least 137 million years on record.

The record covers at least 145.06 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 149.2 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 1 of 9 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 9 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 9 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesEocene — about 6 of 9 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 9 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 9 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 9 occurrences152–147 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences147–142 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences61–56 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences56–51 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences51–46 Mya — about 2 occurrences46–41 Mya — about 3 occurrences25–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–15 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences15–10 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences10–5.1 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences5.1–0 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences145.06 Mya7.246 Mya152 Mya0 Mya

9 occurrences of Orectolobus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

9 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

6 formations

Lisbon — 31.36°N, 86.52°WTallahatta — 31.79°N, 88.32°WTallahatta — 31.37°N, 86.52°WAruma — 28.76°N, 43.74°ELoxton — 34.15°S, 139.91°EBatesford Limestone — 38.09°S, 144.28°ESolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°E

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The named rock units Orectolobus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Orectolobus and its relatives

Eocene

Where Orectolobus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

198 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Orectolobus, 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

6 references

Each of the 9 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 Orectolobus

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Orectolobus 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 itOrectolobidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonaparte 1834