Stenella
Stenella is a genus of marine mammals in Delphinidae, the family informally known as the oceanic dolphins.

Scott Hill National Marine Mammal Laboratory (subdivision of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) · 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
- DelphininaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Delphinidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At least 5.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
29 occurrences of Stenella on record. 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
29 occurrences- Miocene6%
- Pliocene35%
- Pleistocene7%
- Holocene52%
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
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group3
- Iimuro Formation · Kazusa Group2
- San Mateo Formation1
- Tirabuzon Formation1
- Salada Formation1
- Pisco Formation1
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The named rock units Stenella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
512 taxa- Physeteridae4 sites
- Balaenopteridae3 sites
- Delphinidae3 sites
- Delphinus3 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus3 sites
- Kogiidae3 sites
- Mysticeti3 sites
- Otodus megalodon3 sites
- Arctocephalus2 sites
- Camelidae2 sites
- Carcharodon2 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias2 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis2 sites
- Eumetopias2 sites
- Geochelone2 sites
- Globicephala2 sites
- Kogia2 sites
- Monachinae2 sites
- Myliobatis2 sites
- Pelagornis2 sites
- Phalacrocorax2 sites
- Phocidae2 sites
- Phocoenidae2 sites
- Pontoporia2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 27 sites for Stenella, 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
17 references- Cetaceans of the western tropical Indian Ocean: distribution, relative abundance, and comparisons with cetacean communities of two other tropical ecosystems6
- Localidades fosiliferas con Cetaceos en el Neogeno da Baja California, Mexico3
- Catalog of Living Whales3
- Neogene Cetacea of the Lee Creek Phosphate Mine, North Carolina2
- Marine mammal strandings in the New Caledonia region, Southwest Pacific2
- A list of fossil cetaceans in Japan2
- Exploitation of dolphins (Cetacea: Delphinidae) at a 6000 yr old Preceramic site in the Pearl Island archipelago, Panama1
- Revalidation of Tursiops gephyreus Lahille, 1908 (Cetartiodactyla: Delphinidae) from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean1
- Weer een schedel van Protophocaena minima erbij!1
- Distribution of the Rough-Toothed Dolphin (Steno bredanensis) around the Windward Islands (French Polynesia)1
- Distribution of the Clymene dolphin Stenella clymene1
- The Plio-Pleistocene fossil mammals from the Kasumi and Tama Hills1
Each of the 29 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. 5 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 content3
Picture of Stenella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Scott Hill National Marine Mammal Laboratory (subdivision of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Stenella attenuata · AM:Mammalogy:M.33473
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Stenella”
- 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 itDelphininae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1866)