Spicara
Spicara is a genus of ray-finned fish belonging to the family Sparidae, which includes the seabreams and porgies. These fishes are found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The species in the genus are known as picarels.

Julien Renoult · CC BY 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
- CentracanthidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 129 ka.
17 occurrences of Spicara on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
17 occurrences- Eocene6%
- Oligocene13%
- Miocene23%
- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene53%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Spicara 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.
Spicara and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Spicara and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
231 taxa- Lesueurigobius10 sites
- Deltentosteus8 sites
- Gobius8 sites
- Muraena conger8 sites
- Aphia7 sites
- Ceratoscopelus maderensis7 sites
- Dentex7 sites
- Pagellus7 sites
- Cepola6 sites
- Ophidion6 sites
- Blennius ocellaris5 sites
- Carapus acus5 sites
- Diaphus5 sites
- Trachurus trachurus5 sites
- Arnoglossus4 sites
- Cepola rubescens4 sites
- Chromis4 sites
- Diaphus taaningi4 sites
- Echiodon4 sites
- Gadiculus argenteus4 sites
- Gnathophis4 sites
- Gobius niger4 sites
- Grammonus ater4 sites
- Hygophum4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Spicara, 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
9 references- The Zanclean marine fish fauna and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a coastal marine setting in the eastern Mediterranean4
- Pleistocene fish otoliths from the Mediterranean Basin: a synthesis3
- Pleistocene marine fish invasions and paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the eastern Mediterranean2
- Paléobiodiversité et paléoenvironnements: l’exemple des gisements de poissons téléostéens du Messinien préévaporitique d’Oran et du bassin du Chélif (Algérie)2
- Les otolithes des téléostéens de l'oligo-miocène Belge2
- At the crossroads: early Miocene marine fishes of the proto-Mediterranean Sea1
- Otolithes de poissons du Pleistocene inferieur (Santernien) de Morrona (Sud est de Pisa)1
- Fish otoliths from the Late Oligocene (Eger and Kiscell Formations) in the Eger area (northeastern Hungary)1
- Les otolithes du calcaire grossier a fercourt (Eocene du bassin du Paris)1
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 content1
Picture of Spicara
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Julien Renoult
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Spicara was found in Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Spicara”
- 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 itCentracanthidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rafinesque 1810