Sebastes
Sebastes is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the subfamily Sebastinae part of the family Scorpaenidae, most of which have the common name of rockfish. A few are called ocean perch, sea perch or redfish instead. They are found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

V. O'Connell, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Image ID: nur00516 · Public Domain · 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
- ScorpaenidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
Time the record covers
At least 48 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.
47 occurrences of Sebastes 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
47 occurrencesThese 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
11 formations
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation12
- Timms Point Silt Formation4
- Monterey Formation3
- Port Orford Formation3
- Elk River Formation3
- San Pedro Formation3
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The named rock units Sebastes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Sebastes and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sebastes and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,041 taxa- Cymatogaster aggregata10 sites
- Seriphus politus9 sites
- Engraulis mordax8 sites
- Galeorhinus galeus8 sites
- Genyonemus lineatus8 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus8 sites
- Merluccius productus8 sites
- Microgadus proximus8 sites
- Porichthys notatus8 sites
- Raja8 sites
- Citharichthys sordidus7 sites
- Myliobatis californica7 sites
- Triakis semifasciata7 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias6 sites
- Chilara taylori6 sites
- Citharichthys stigmaeus6 sites
- Glyptocephalus zachirus6 sites
- Leptocottus armatus6 sites
- Squatina californica6 sites
- Atherinopsis californiensis5 sites
- Carcharhinus5 sites
- Citharichthys5 sites
- Embiotocidae5 sites
- Paralichthys californicus5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Sebastes, 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
22 references- The Marine Fish Fauna of the Middle Pleistocene Port Orford Formation6
- Otoliths and other fish remains from the Chumash Midden at Rincon Point (SBa-1) Santa Barbara-Ventura counties, California5
- The fish fauna of the Playa Del Rey locality, a southern California marine Pleistocene deposit5
- Preliminary List of the Marine Fishes and Other Vertebrate Remains from the Late Pleistocene Palos Verdes Sand Formation at Costa Mesa, Orange County, California4
- Otoliths and other fish remains from the Timms Point Silt (Early Pleistocene) at San Pedro, California4
- Fish remains, mostly otoliths and teeth, from the Palos Verdes Sand (Late Pleistocene) of California3
- The marine fish fauna, based primarily on otoliths, of a Lower Pleistocene deposit at San Pedro, California (LACMIP 332, San Pedro Sand)3
- Fish records from the Pleistocene of southern California in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum2
- Miocene Fishes of Southern California2
- Investigations at an eroded shell midden reveal direct evidence for fur seal hunting and diverse subsistence strategies on Late Holocene Santa Rosa (Wima) Island, California1
- Geology and Paleontology of the Late Miocene Wilson Grove Formation at Bloomfield Quarry, Sonoma County, California1
- Emergency excavation in the Grube (Unterfeld) Frauenweiler clay pit (Oligocene Rupelian; Baden-Wurttemberg, S Germany): New records and palaeoenvironmental informatino1
Each of the 47 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. 10 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Sebastes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- V. O'Connell, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Image ID: nur00516
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- LACM Ichthyology
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Sebastes peduncularis · LACM:Fish:8818.006
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, “Sebastes”
- 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 itScorpaenidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cuvier 1829