Watsonulus

Watsonulus is an extinct genus of prehistoric ray-finned fish that lived during the Early Triassic epoch in what is now Madagascar. It may have also existed in what is now Himachal Pradesh, India, during the Induan age. The type species, described by Jean Piveteau, is Watsonia eugnathoides. Because "Watsonia" was preoccupied, the new genus name Watsonulus was later erected. The genus is named after David Meredith Seares Watson.

Watsonulus

GleisReis · 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
ParasemionotidaePBDB
Diet
grazer, detritivorePBDB, for Parasemionotidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes

Time the record covers

At most 4.1 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 251.1 Mya and 247 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Triassic — about 9 of 9 occurrencesEarly TriassicMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 9 occurrences251–251 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences251–251 Mya — about 5 occurrences251–251 Mya — about 3 occurrences251–251 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251.6 Mya246.5 Mya

9 occurrences of Watsonulus on record, most of them in the Early Triassic. 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

9 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

4 formations

Middle Sakamena — 13.05°S, 48.87°EMiddle Sakamena — 21.71°S, 45.18°ELipovskaya — 49.26°N, 43.67°EMikin — 32.01°N, 78.08°EDaye — 26.61°N, 107.26°E

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The named rock units Watsonulus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Watsonulus and its relatives

Early Triassic

Where Watsonulus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.

Found in the same rock

70 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Watsonulus, 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

7 references

Each of the 9 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 Watsonulus

Credit
GleisReis
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Watsonulus 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 itParasemionotidae through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brough 1939