Solea
Solea is a genus of soles from the Indo-Pacific and East Atlantic Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea.

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
- SoleidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pleuronectiformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Pleuronectiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Pleuronectiformes
Time the record covers
At least 118 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 129 ka.
43 occurrences of Solea on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
43 occurrences- Early Cretaceous2%
- Eocene9%
- Oligocene11%
- Miocene60%
- Pliocene11%
- Pleistocene6%
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
7 formations
- Raz-el-Ain Formation6
- Barton Beds Formation2
- Hrušky Formation2
- Barton Clay Formation1
- Entre Rios Formation1
- Mokattam Formation1
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The named rock units Solea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 29 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Solea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Solea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,149 taxa- Maurolicus muelleri13 sites
- Trachurus12 sites
- Gadiculus9 sites
- Merluccius merluccius9 sites
- Bregmaceros albyi8 sites
- Capros aper7 sites
- Gobius7 sites
- Argentina sphyraena6 sites
- Dentex (Polysteganus) gregarius6 sites
- Dentex nobilis6 sites
- Diaphus6 sites
- Diaphus debilis6 sites
- Lampanyctus6 sites
- Merluccius6 sites
- Micromesistius poutassou6 sites
- Myctophum6 sites
- Belone5 sites
- Boops5 sites
- Diaphus edwardsi5 sites
- Engraulis5 sites
- Gadiculus argenteus5 sites
- Lesueurigobius5 sites
- Lobianchia dofleini5 sites
- Macrurus gracilis5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Solea, 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
25 references- Les otolithes des téléostéens de l'oligo-miocène Belge5
- Données récentes sur Les téléostéens du Miocène et du Pliocéne d'Italie4
- Messinian marine fish communities of the Mediterranean Sea4
- Faunal Horizons of the Barton Beds in Hampshire3
- Paléobiodiversité et paléoenvironnements: l’exemple des gisements de poissons téléostéens du Messinien préévaporitique d’Oran et du bassin du Chélif (Algérie)2
- Fish otoliths from the Middle Miocene of Kienberg at Mikulov, Czech REpublic, Vienna Basin: Their paleoenvironmental and paleogeographic significance2
- Biogeography and climatology of Pliocene and Messinian fossil fish of eastern-central Italy2
- Les Poissons fossiles d'Oran2
- Description of fish otoliths from the Tertiary formationsof Atcheen, Northern Sumatra2
- Neue Untersuchungen an tertiaren Fisch-otolithen. Part II2
- Fish otoliths from the Konkian (Miocene, early Serravallian) of Mangyshlak (Kazakhstan): testimony to an early endemic evolution in the Eastern Paratethys1
- Tortonian fish otoliths from turbiditic deposits in Northern Italy: Taxonomic and stratigraphic significance1
Each of the 43 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. 13 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 Solea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hans Hillewaert
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Solea solea · KU:KUI:25125
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 itSoleidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gouan 1770