Alepisauriformes
Aulopiformes is a diverse order of marine ray-finned fish consisting of some 15 extant and several prehistoric families with about 45 genera and over 230 species. The common names grinners, lizardfishes and allies, or aulopiforms are sometimes used for this group. They are included in the superorder Cyclosquamata, though modern taxonomists consider this superorder to be unwarranted.

Richard Ling · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- EurypterygiaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 8.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 121.4 Mya and 113.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Alepisauriformes on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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
1 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Alepisauriformes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Alepisauriformes and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Alepisauriformes and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
44 taxa- Acritarcha1 site
- Arecipites1 site
- Belostomatidae1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
- Bombacaceae1 site
- Cerithiidae1 site
- Cirolana aptiana1 site
- Cirolana bretoni1 site
- Cirolana longirostra1 site
- Cirolanidae1 site
- Classopolis sp.1 site
- Dinoflagellata1 site
- Echinoidea1 site
- Ellimmichthyiformes1 site
- Enchodontidae1 site
- Ephedra1 site
- Fungi1 site
- Gonorynchiformes1 site
- Ichthyodectiformes1 site
- Lauraceae1 site
- Lilidae indet.1 site
- Macrosemiocotzus1 site
- Moraceae1 site
- Normapolles sp.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Alepisauriformes, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Alepisauriformes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Richard Ling
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alepisauriformes 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
- 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 itEurypterygia through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Regan 1911