Protopirata
Edestus is an extinct genus of eugeneodontid holocephalian fish known from the Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) of the United Kingdom, Russia, and the United States. Most remains consist of isolated curved blades or "whorls" that are studded with teeth, that in life were situated within the midline of the upper and lower jaws. Edestus is a Greek name derived from the word edeste, in reference to the aberrant quality and size of the species' teeth.

Gyik Toma (Tommy the paleobear) from Romania · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- EdestidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Eugeneodontiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Eugeneodontiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Eugeneodontiformes
Time the record covers
At most 25 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 323.4 Mya and 298.9 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Protopirata 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
1 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.
Protopirata and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Protopirata and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
3 taxa- Agassizodus variabilis1 site
- Petalodus allegheniensis1 site
- Petrodus patelliformis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Protopirata, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 content1
Picture of Protopirata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Gyik Toma (Tommy the paleobear) from Romania
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Protopirata 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Edestus”
- 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 itEdestidae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Trautschold 1888