Anostomidae
The Anostomidae are a family of ray-finned fishes that belong to the order Characiformes. Closely related to the Chilodidae and formerly included with them, the Anostomidae contain about 150 described species. Commonly known as anostomids, they are found in freshwater habitats from the Río Atrato in northernmost South America to warm-temperate central Argentina; they are of Amazon origin, with few found west of the Andes. Their scientific name approximately means "mouth on top", from Ancient Greek áno- (ἄνω) "up" + stóma (στόμᾶ) "mouth", in reference to the arrangement of these fishes' mouth opening.

User:Haplochromis · 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
- ErythrinoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Characiformes
Time the record covers
At least 26 million years on record.
The record covers at least 37.71 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 7.246 Mya.
34 occurrences of Anostomidae on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
34 occurrencesThese 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
- Pozo Formation20
- Pebas Formation10
- Chambira Formation3
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group1
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The named rock units Anostomidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Anostomidae and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Anostomidae and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
204 taxa- Leporinus19 sites
- Characiformes17 sites
- Hydrolycus17 sites
- Trichodactylidae15 sites
- Caviomorpha13 sites
- Serrasalminae indet.12 sites
- Caimaninae11 sites
- Gavialoidea9 sites
- Potamotrygon canaanorum8 sites
- Anura7 sites
- Eusuchia7 sites
- Lepidosirenidae7 sites
- Plantae7 sites
- Serrasalminae <pacu-like>7 sites
- Charophyceae6 sites
- Loricariidae6 sites
- Octodontoidea6 sites
- Pyrotheria6 sites
- Serrasalminae <piranha-like>6 sites
- Siluriformes6 sites
- Testudines6 sites
- Eoincamys valverdei5 sites
- Gastropoda5 sites
- Podocnemis5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Anostomidae, 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
3 references- A 60-million-year Cenozoic history of western Amazonian ecosystems in Contamana, eastern Peru18
- Biotic community and landscape changes around the Eocene–Oligocene transition at Shapaja, Peruvian Amazonia: Regional or global drivers?15
- Freshwater Fishes and their paleobiotic implications1
Each of the 34 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 Anostomidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anostomidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Anostomidae”
- 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 itErythrinoidea through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.