Sphyraena barracuda
Sphyraena barracuda, commonly known as the great barracuda, is a species of barracuda, a genus of 27 species of large ray-finned fish found in subtropical oceans worldwide.

Uncredited · 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
- SphyraenaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Length
- 1.7 mWikidata
- Mass
- 44 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 13 million years on record.
The record covers at least 13.82 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
17 occurrences of Sphyraena barracuda on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
17 occurrences- Miocene63%
- Pliocene18%
- Pleistocene13%
- Holocene6%
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
11 formations
- Bermont Formation2
- Luanda Formation2
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group2
- Gatun Formation1
- Tamiami Formation1
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
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The named rock units Sphyraena barracuda 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.
Sphyraena barracuda and its relatives
MioceneWhere Sphyraena barracuda and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,047 taxa- Hemipristis serra12 sites
- Otodus megalodon12 sites
- Carcharhinus11 sites
- Dasyatis10 sites
- Aetobatus8 sites
- Negaprion brevirostris8 sites
- Carcharias taurus7 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias7 sites
- Galeocerdo cuvier7 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus7 sites
- Lagodon rhomboides7 sites
- Myliobatis7 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis6 sites
- Mustelus6 sites
- Raja6 sites
- Squatina6 sites
- Albula5 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus5 sites
- Merluccius5 sites
- Mobula5 sites
- Physogaleus contortus5 sites
- Pinus5 sites
- Pogonias cromis5 sites
- Rhinoptera5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Sphyraena barracuda, 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
11 references- Geology and biostratigraphy of the Potomac River Cliffs at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia4
- Faunes ichthyologiques du Néogène supérieur d'Angola, leur âge, remarques sur le Pliocène marin en Afrique australe3
- The Neogene sharks, rays, and bony fishes from Lee Creek Mine, Aurora, North Carolina2
- The first documented fossil records of Isistius and Squatina (Chondrichthyes) from Florida, with an overview of the associated vertebrate fauna1
- Late Prehistoric Lucayan occupation and subsistence on Middle Caicos Island, northern West Indies1
- Los selaceos fósiles de Ia localidad de Alto Guayacan ( y otros ictiolitos asociados)1
- Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes from the early Pleistocene Leisey Shell Pit local fauna, Hillsborough County, Florida1
- Stratigraphy, paleoecology, and vertebrate fauna of the Leisey Shell Pit Local Fauna, early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) of southwestern Florida1
- Paleontology of the Middle Miocene Los Indios Member of the Rosarito Beach Formation, Northwestern Baja California, Mexico1
- A marine ichthyofauna from the Miocene of Panama, and the Tertiary Caribbean faunal province1
- Recent discoveries of late Tertiary marine mammals in Florida1
Each of the 17 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 content2
Picture of Sphyraena barracuda
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- LJMUZoology
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itSphyraena through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Edwards 1771)