Apistus
Apistus is a monotypic genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the subfamily Apistinae, the wasp scorpionfishes, part of the family Scorpaenidae, the scorpionfishes and their relatives. Its only species is the Apistus carinatus, which has the common names ocellated waspfish, bearded waspfish, longfin waspfish or ringtailed cardinalfish. It has a wide Indo-Pacific distribution. This species has venom-bearing spines in its fins.

Rickard Zerpe · 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
- ApistidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Scorpaeniformes
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Apistus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene100%
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 Apistus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Apistus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Apistus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
31 taxa- Acentrogobius2 sites
- Acentrogobius matsya2 sites
- Amblyeleotris2 sites
- Amblyeleotris kireedam2 sites
- Ancistrogobius indicus2 sites
- Aphia macrophthalma2 sites
- Apogon2 sites
- Apogonichthyoides2 sites
- Batrachoididae2 sites
- Bregmaceros deklaszi2 sites
- Callionymus2 sites
- Callionymus vyali2 sites
- Carangidae2 sites
- Caranx2 sites
- Cirripectes biconvexus2 sites
- Drombus thackerae2 sites
- Engraulidae2 sites
- Fibramia keralensis2 sites
- Gobiidae2 sites
- Gobiodon burdigalicus2 sites
- Gobius laevis2 sites
- Jaydia quilonica2 sites
- Ostorhinchus2 sites
- Otolithus circularis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Apistus, 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 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Apistus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rickard Zerpe
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it

CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Apistus carinatus · SIO:Marine Vertebrates:66-525
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Apistus”
- 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 itApistidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cuvier 1829