Raja clavata
The thornback ray, or thornback skate, is a species of ray fish in the family Rajidae.

Hans Hillewaert · 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
- RajaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Rajiformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Rajiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Rajiformes
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 13.82 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 774 ka.
3 occurrences of Raja clavata on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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- Miocene33%
- Pliocene33%
- Pleistocene33%
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
3 formations
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The named rock units Raja clavata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Raja clavata and its relatives
MioceneWhere Raja clavata and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
117 taxa- Abra (Abra) prismatica1 site
- Abra alba1 site
- Achomosphaera andalousiensis suttonensis1 site
- Alca torda1 site
- Amiculosphaera1 site
- Amyclina labiosa1 site
- Anas platyrhynchos1 site
- Angulus (Peronaea) benedeni1 site
- Aporrhais1 site
- Aquipecten cf. opercularis1 site
- Arctica islandica1 site
- Arnoglossus laterna1 site
- Astarte1 site
- Astarte (Astarte) galeotti1 site
- Astarte (Digitariopsis) obliquata1 site
- Astarte incerta1 site
- Ataxiodinium1 site
- Axius lineadactylus1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Barssidinium1 site
- Bitectatodinum tepikiense1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
- Bubo bubo1 site
- Buccinum undatum1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Raja clavata, 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
3 references- Neogene stratigraphy of the Langenboom locality (Noord-Brabant, Netherlands)1
- Fossiles de Belgique. Dents de Requins et de Raies du Tertiare de la Belgique1
- The Vertebrata of the Forest Bed Series of Norfolk and Suffolk1
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. 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 Raja clavata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hans Hillewaert
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Raja clavata was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource 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 itRaja through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1767