Platycephalus indicus
The bartail flathead, also known as the Indian flathead, gobi or Indo-Pacific flathead, is a species of largely marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Platycephalidae, the flatheads. This species is found in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific Ocean, and has invaded the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Ibrahim Daas · CC BY 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
- PlatycephalusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Perciformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Perciformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Perciformes
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Platycephalus indicus 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- Pleistocene100%
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.
Platycephalus indicus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Platycephalus indicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Conger2 sites
- Congridarum bellus2 sites
- Crangidarum calidus n. sp.2 sites
- Engraulis japonicus2 sites
- Gobius2 sites
- Gobius copiosus2 sites
- Gobius urbanus2 sites
- Sardinops2 sites
- Sparidarum babai2 sites
- Acanthopagrus sp.1 site
- Amblychaeturichthys sp.1 site
- Carangidae1 site
- Chaenogobius castaneus1 site
- Conger durus1 site
- Hemiramphidae1 site
- Konosirus sp.1 site
- Kuhlia1 site
- Lateolabrax japonicus1 site
- Mugilidae1 site
- Percoidei1 site
- Plecoglossus altivelis1 site
- Pleuronectiformes1 site
- Sardinella1 site
- Scorpaenifores indet.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Platycephalus indicus, 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
2 references- 541. Some Pleistocene fish-otoliths from the Boso and Miura peninsulas2
- Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic fish faunas of Japan1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Platycephalus indicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ibrahim Daas
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Platycephalus indicus · UWFC:ADULT COLLECTION:UW 021106
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 itPlatycephalus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)