Amiopsis

Amiopsis is an extinct genus of freshwater and marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Amiidae, making it closely related to the modern bowfin. Fossils are known from the Late Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone, Germany, the Early Cretaceous Purbeck Group, England, La Pedrera de Rúbies Formation, Spain and Bernnissant Iguanodon locality, Belgium and the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of the Balkans. The monophyly of the genus is questionable, due to it being based on a single character, "the presence of three or more lateral fossae on each side of most abdominal centra". Remains previously assigned to this genus from the Early Cretaceous Las Hoyas, Spain have been moved into the new genus Hispanamia.

Amiopsis

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
AmiopsinaePBDB
Diet
carnivore, piscivorePBDB, for Amiiformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Amiiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Amiiformes

Time the record covers

At least 55 million years on record.

The record covers at least 145.06 Mya to 89.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 152.21 Mya to 83.6 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 5 of 18 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 8 of 18 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 5 of 18 occurrencesLate Cretaceous154–151 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences151–149 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences149–146 Mya — about 2 occurrences146–144 Mya — about 1 occurrence144–142 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences142–139 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences139–137 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences135–132 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences132–130 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences130–127 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences127–125 Mya — about 1 occurrence125–123 Mya — about 3 occurrences123–120 Mya — about 2 occurrences120–118 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences118–116 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences116–113 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences101–99 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 1 occurrence96–94 Mya — about 1 occurrence94–92 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences92–89 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences89–87 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences87–85 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences85–82 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences145.06 Mya89.8 Mya154 Mya82 Mya

18 occurrences of Amiopsis on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

18 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

8 formations

Solnhofen — 48.90°N, 11.18°ESolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°ESolnhofen — 48.94°N, 8.41°ELa Huérguina — 40.06°N, 1.88°WSainte-Barbe Clays — 50.48°N, 3.65°EGrünsandstein — 48.93°N, 11.83°EKomen Limestone — 45.82°N, 13.74°EWeald Clay — 50.66°N, 2.46°WLa Pedrera de Rúbies — 42.03°N, 0.83°ECellina — 46.18°N, 13.26°E

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The named rock units Amiopsis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Amiopsis and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Amiopsis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

309 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Amiopsis, 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

Each of the 18 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 Amiopsis

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Amiopsis 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 itAmiopsinae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kner 1863