Phanerosteon
Phanerosteon is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish from the Carboniferous period. The type species, P. mirabile, was recovered from the Calciferous sandstone series (Pennsylvanian), Scotland. A second species, P. phonax was described from the Serpukhovian aged Bear Gulch Limestone lagerstätte in Montana, United States.

Oilshale · 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
- PhanerosteonoideiPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Actinopterygii
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 346.7 Mya to 326.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 358.86 Mya to 323.4 Mya.
10 occurrences of Phanerosteon 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
10 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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
- Heath Formation · Big Snowy Group4
- Tyne limestone Formation · Yoredale Group2
- Glencartholm Volcanic Beds Formation · Upper Border Group1
- Calciferous Sandstone Formation1
- Ballagan Formation1
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The named rock units Phanerosteon 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.
Phanerosteon and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Phanerosteon and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
109 taxa- Rhadinichthys5 sites
- Discoserra pectinodon4 sites
- Fubarichthyiformes4 sites
- Rhadinichthys canobiensis4 sites
- Wendyichthys dicksoni4 sites
- Cheirodopsis geikiei3 sites
- Elonichthys pulcherrimus3 sites
- Elonichthys serratus3 sites
- Mesopoma3 sites
- Mesopoma politum3 sites
- Mesopoma pulchellum3 sites
- Paphosiscus circulocaudus3 sites
- Aetheretmon valentiacum2 sites
- Archisymplectes rhothon2 sites
- Beagiascus pulcherrimus2 sites
- Canobius2 sites
- Canobius elegantulus2 sites
- Cosmoptychius striatus2 sites
- Cycloptychius concentricus2 sites
- Cyranorhis bergeraci2 sites
- Elonichthys2 sites
- Guildayichthys carnegiei2 sites
- Holurus parki2 sites
- Kalops2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Phanerosteon, 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- Certain Bear Gulch (Namurian A, Montana) Acinopterygii (Osteichthyes) and a reevaluation of the evolution of the Paleozoic actinopterygians4
- Glencartholm revisited: describing for the first time Stan Wood's discovery and excavation of Mumbie Quarry, adjacent to the important Palaeozoic fossil site of Glencartholm2
- The early diversification of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii): hypotheses, challenges and future prospects1
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates1
- Fossil Fishes of Great Britain1
- Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum (Natural History). Part II1
Each of the 10 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 Phanerosteon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Oilshale
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phanerosteon 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 itPhanerosteonoidei through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Traquair 1881