Blennius ocellaris
The butterfly blenny is a small marine blenniid fish of Northern and Western Europe, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea and Morocco. It is usually found at a depth of 10–400 metres (33–1,312 ft) down, especially in areas with a rocky floor.

Etrusko25 · 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
- BlenniusPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 6.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 129 ka.
6 occurrences of Blennius ocellaris on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
6 occurrences- Miocene17%
- Pliocene17%
- Pleistocene67%
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 Blennius ocellaris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Blennius ocellaris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Blennius ocellaris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
127 taxa- Deltentosteus6 sites
- Lesueurigobius6 sites
- Ceratoscopelus maderensis5 sites
- Muraena conger5 sites
- Aphia4 sites
- Dentex4 sites
- Gobius4 sites
- Spicara smaris4 sites
- Arnoglossus kokeni3 sites
- Benthosema suborbitale3 sites
- Carapus acus3 sites
- Cepola rubescens3 sites
- Diaphus splendidus3 sites
- Diaphus taaningi3 sites
- Echiodon3 sites
- Gadiculus argenteus3 sites
- Gobius niger3 sites
- Hygophum3 sites
- Lobianchia dofleini3 sites
- Micromesistius poutassou3 sites
- Myctophum punctatum3 sites
- Ophidion3 sites
- Pagellus3 sites
- Pomatoschistus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Blennius ocellaris, 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
5 references- Pleistocene fish otoliths from the Mediterranean Basin: a synthesis2
- The Zanclean marine fish fauna and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a coastal marine setting in the eastern Mediterranean1
- Pleistocene marine fish invasions and paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the eastern Mediterranean1
- Connectivity controls on the late Miocene eastern Mediterranean fish fauna1
- Otolithes de poissons du Pleistocene inferieur (Santernien) de Morrona (Sud est de Pisa)1
Each of the 6 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 Blennius ocellaris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Etrusko25
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Blennius ocellaris 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 itBlennius through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758