Pachyrhizodus
Pachyrhizodus is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish that lived during the Cretaceous to Paleocene in what is now Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania. Many species are known, primarily from the Cretaceous of England and the midwestern United States.

Fishboy86164577 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- PachyrhizodontidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Crossognathiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Crossognathiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Crossognathiformes
Time the record covers
At least 34 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 66 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 113.2 Mya to 61.66 Mya.
80 occurrences of Pachyrhizodus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
80 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
23 formations
- Greenhorn Limestone Formation · Colorado Group24
- Mooreville Chalk Formation · Selma Group8
- Niobrara Formation · Colorado Group7
- Carlile Shale Formation · Colorado Group5
- Scaglia Variegata Alpina Formation4
- Holleywell, New Pit, Lewes Formation · White Chalk Group3
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The named rock units Pachyrhizodus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pachyrhizodus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Pachyrhizodus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
480 taxa- Cretoxyrhina mantelli26 sites
- Squalicorax falcatus26 sites
- Enchodus gladiolus22 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata21 sites
- Enchodus shumardi21 sites
- Xiphactinus audax20 sites
- Protosphyraena19 sites
- Plethodidae17 sites
- Squalicorax curvatus16 sites
- Archaeolamna kopingensis15 sites
- Caturidae15 sites
- Cretomanta canadensis14 sites
- Enchodus petrosus14 sites
- Microcarcharias saskatchewanensis12 sites
- Scapanorhynchus raphiodon12 sites
- Ptychodus decurrens11 sites
- Ptychodus whipplei11 sites
- Cenocarcharias tenuiplicatus10 sites
- Ptychodus anonymus10 sites
- Ptychodus occidentalis10 sites
- Rhinobatos incertus10 sites
- Albulidae9 sites
- Enchodus9 sites
- Squalicorax9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 66 sites for Pachyrhizodus, 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
46 references- The vertebrate fauna of the Selma Formation of Alabama, part VIII, the fishes13
- Fossil fishes from the basal Greenhorn Limestone (Upper Cretaceous, Late Cenomanian) in Russell County, Kansas7
- The English Chalk and London Clay: two remarkable British bony fish Lagerstatten5
- Upper Cenomanian fishes from the Bonarelli level (OAE2) of northeastern Italy4
- Late Cretaceous marine vertebrates from the upper half of the Pfeifer Shale Member of the Greenhorn Limestone in central Kansas, USA, and comments on the geologically oldest mosasaur remains in Kansas3
- Fossil vertebrates from a unique marine bonebed of the Upper Cretaceous Smoky Hill Chalk, western Kansas, U.S.A.: new insights into the paleoecology of the Niobrara Formation2
- A new fossil vertebrate locality of the Jetmore Chalk Member of the Upper Cretaceous Greenhorn Limestone in north-central Kansas, U.S.A.2
- Fossil marine vertebrates from the Codell Sandstone Member (middle Turonian) of the Upper Cretaceous Carlile Shale in Jewell County, Kansas, USA2
- Marine vertebrates from the Hartland Shale (Upper Cretaceous: Upper Cenomanian) in southeastern Colorado, USA2
- Fossil marine vertebrates from the lowermost Greenhorn Limestone (Upper Cretaceous: Middle Cenomanian) in southeastern Colorado2
- An associated dentition and calcified vertebral centra of the Late Cretaceous elasmobranch, Ptychodus anonymus Williston 19002
- Fossil vertebrates from the marine Cretaceous of Manitoba2
Each of the 80 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. 34 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 content1
Picture of Pachyrhizodus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Fishboy86164577
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pachyrhizodus 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
- 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 itPachyrhizodontidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.