Protopterus aethiopicus
The marbled lungfish is a lungfish of the family Protopteridae. Also known as the leopard lungfish, it is found in Eastern and Central Africa, as well as the Nile region. At 133 billion base pairs, it has the largest known genome of any animal and one of the largest of any organism, along with the flowering plant Paris japonica, the fern Tmesipteris oblanceolata and the protist Polychaos dubium at 150 billion, 160 billion and 670 billion, respectively.
George Berninger Jr. · 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- Also called
- marbled lungfishPBDB
- Sits inside
- ProtopterusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ceratodontiformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Ceratodontiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ceratodontiformes
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Lepidosirenidae
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Protopterus aethiopicus 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
4 occurrences- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene25%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Protopterus aethiopicus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Protopterus aethiopicus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Protopterus aethiopicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
130 taxa- Clarias4 sites
- Synodontis4 sites
- Barbus3 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius3 sites
- Lates niloticus3 sites
- Phacochoerus aethiopicus3 sites
- Synodontis frontosus3 sites
- Accipitridae2 sites
- Barbus bynni2 sites
- Bovidae2 sites
- Carnivora2 sites
- Cercopithecidae2 sites
- Cichlidae2 sites
- Damaliscus lunatus2 sites
- Equus quagga burchelli2 sites
- Hippotragus equinus2 sites
- Homo sapiens2 sites
- Hydrictis maculicollis2 sites
- Kobus ellipsiprymnus2 sites
- Lutra2 sites
- Ourebia ourebi2 sites
- Panthera leo2 sites
- Polypterus2 sites
- Potamochoerus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Protopterus aethiopicus, 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- Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers at Ishango (eastern Zaire): the faunal evidence3
- A Primitive New Middle Pliocenemurid from Wadi El Natrun,Egypt1
Each of the 4 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Protopterus aethiopicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- George Berninger Jr.
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Protopterus aethiopicus · UF:Fish:107237
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 itProtopterus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Heckel 1851