Bawitius

Bawitius is an extinct genus of giant polypterid from the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt. The type species is B. bartheli, named as a species of Polypterus in 1984, and the genus etymology comes from Bawiti, the principal settlement of the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt. It is known from the holotype TU-B SFB 69 Vb 003 : left ectopterygoid scales and some sparse scales.

Bawitius

Artwork by Joschua Knüppe. Article by Jamale Ijouiher. · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
PolypteridaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Polypteridae

Time the record covers

At most 13 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 93.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 3 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 3 occurrencesLate Cretaceous106–106 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–100 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences100–99 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences99–98 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences98–97 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences97–96 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences96–95 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences95–94 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106.8 Mya93.4 Mya

3 occurrences of Bawitius on record, most of them in the Late 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

3 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

3 formations

Baharîje — 28.33°N, 28.98°EGrès rouges — 31.55°N, 2.43°WGara Samani — 29.67°N, 1.92°E

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The named rock units Bawitius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Bawitius and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Bawitius and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

32 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Bawitius, 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

Each of the 3 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 content1

Picture of Bawitius

Credit
Artwork by Joschua Knüppe. Article by Jamale Ijouiher.
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Bawitius 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 itPolypteridae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Grandstaff et al. 2012