Sprattus

Sprattus is a genus of small oily fish of the family Clupeidae. They are more usually known by their common name, sprats. There are five species in the genus.

Sprattus

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
ClupeinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Clupeiformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Clupeiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Clupeiformes

Time the record covers

At least 13 million years on record.

The record covers at least 18.7 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 21.7 Mya to 2.4 Mya.

Miocene — about 6 of 7 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 7 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 0 of 7 occurrences22–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences7.3–6.6 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences6.6–6.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences6.0–5.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences5.3–4.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.6–3.9 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.9–3.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.3–2.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.6–1.9 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18.7 Mya5.333 Mya22.2 Mya1.9 Mya

7 occurrences of Sprattus 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

7 occurrences

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

Mount Harris — 44.82°S, 170.88°EMount Harris — 45.06°S, 170.95°ESouthburn Sand — 44.30°S, 171.00°ESouthburn Sand — 44.37°S, 170.91°ERifle Butts Siltstone — 45.06°S, 170.95°E

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The named rock units Sprattus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sprattus and its relatives

Miocene

Where Sprattus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

111 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Sprattus, 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

2 references

Each of the 7 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 Sprattus

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Sprattus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

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 itClupeinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Girgensohn 1846