Anaethalion

Anaethalion is an extinct genus of prehistoric marine and freshwater ray-finned fish related to modern tarpons and ladyfish. It is known from the Late Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous of Europe and northeasterrn Asia, roughly encompassing the Tethys Ocean.

Anaethalion

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
ElopidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Elopiformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Elopiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Elopiformes

Time the record covers

At least 48 million years on record.

The record covers at least 149.2 Mya to 100.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 152.21 Mya to 93.9 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 6 of 12 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 5 of 12 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 12 occurrencesLate Cretaceous153–151 Mya — about 1 occurrence151–149 Mya — about 3 occurrences149–147 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences147–145 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences145–143 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences143–141 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences127–125 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences125–123 Mya — about 1 occurrence123–121 Mya — about 1 occurrence121–119 Mya — about 1 occurrence115–113 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences113–111 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences111–109 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences101–99 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences99–97 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences97–95 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences95–93 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences149.2 Mya100.5 Mya153 Mya93 Mya

12 occurrences of Anaethalion on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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

12 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

La Pedrera de Rúbies — 42.03°N, 0.83°EPainten — 48.92°N, 11.58°ETorleite — 50.04°N, 11.12°ETurga — 50.83°N, 116.19°ELiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°ESainte-Barbe Clays — 50.48°N, 3.65°EGrünsandstein — 48.93°N, 11.83°ESolnhofen — 48.90°N, 11.18°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Anaethalion 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.

Anaethalion and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Anaethalion and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

266 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Anaethalion, 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 12 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 Anaethalion

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 Anaethalion 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 itElopidae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. White 1938