Callionymus
Callionymus is a genus of dragonets found mostly in the Indian and Pacific oceans with a few species occurring in the Atlantic Ocean.

Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- CallionymidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 40 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
16 occurrences of Callionymus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
16 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
- Selsey Formation · Bracklesham Group4
- Quilon Formation2
- Elmore Formation · Bracklesham Group1
- Tsurevsky Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Callionymus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Callionymus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Callionymus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
290 taxa- Sparus7 sites
- Cylindracanthus rectus6 sites
- Eotrigonodon serratus6 sites
- Palaeocybium proosti6 sites
- Sphyraenodus lerichei6 sites
- Abdounia5 sites
- Abdounia lapierrei5 sites
- Aetobatus irregularis5 sites
- Aetomylaeus dixoni5 sites
- Aetomylaeus striatus5 sites
- Apogon bellovacinus5 sites
- Aves5 sites
- Brachycarcharias lerichei5 sites
- Burnhamia daviesi5 sites
- Carcharias5 sites
- Carcharias acutissimus5 sites
- Chelone5 sites
- Conger5 sites
- Coupatezia woutersi5 sites
- Dasyatis jaekeli5 sites
- Egertonia5 sites
- Eosolea bartonensis5 sites
- Eostegostoma5 sites
- Galeocerdo latidens5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Callionymus, 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
8 references- The Selsey Division (Bracklesham Group) at Lee-on-the-Solent, Gosport, (Hants)5
- New perspectives on late Tethyan Neogene biodiversity development of fishes based on Miocene (~ 17 Ma) otholiths from southwestern India4
- Reconstruction of the fossil marine bony fish fauna (Teleostei) from the Eocene to Pleistocene of New Zealand by means of otoliths. With studies of Recent congroid, morid and trachinoid otoliths2
- Otoliths in situ from Sarmatian (Middle Miocene) fishes of the Paratethys. Part III: tales from the cradle of the Ponto-Caspian gobies1
- Volhynian (early Sarmatian sensu lato) fishes from Tsurevsky, North Caucasus, Russia1
- Données récentes sur Les téléostéens du Miocène et du Pliocéne d'Italie1
- Messinian marine fish communities of the Mediterranean Sea1
- La faune ichthyologique de l'Ypresien de la Belgique1
Each of the 16 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 content2
Picture of Callionymus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hans Hillewaert
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- LACM Ichthyology
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Callionymus pauciradiatus · LACM:Fish:1454.000
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, “Callionymus”
- 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 itCallionymidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758