Carinacanthus jepseni
Carinacanthus is an extinct genus of small freshwater hybodont shark that inhabited eastern North America during the Triassic period. It contains a single species, C. jepseni from the Late Triassic (Norian)-aged Lockatong Formation of Pennsylvania, USA. It was named after paleontologist Glenn Lowell Jepsen. Some authors consider it a late-surviving ctenacanthiform.

William L. Bryant (1870-1947) · Public Domain · 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
- CarinacanthusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ctenacanthiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Ctenacanthiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ctenacanthiformes
Time the record covers
At most 22 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 227.3 Mya and 205.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Carinacanthus jepseni on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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- Late Triassic100%
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
- Lockatong Formation · Chatham Group2
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The named rock units Carinacanthus jepseni has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Carinacanthus jepseni and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Carinacanthus jepseni and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
15 taxa- Gwyneddichtis major2 sites
- Archosauromorpha1 site
- Diplurus longicaudatus1 site
- Eurecana gyrolepis1 site
- Gwyneddichtis gwyneddensis1 site
- Gwyneddichtis minor1 site
- Osteopleurus newarki1 site
- Plantae1 site
- Rabdiolepis gwyneddensis1 site
- Rabdiolepis striata1 site
- Redfieldius1 site
- Redfieldius redfieldi1 site
- Semionotus howelli1 site
- Semionotus ovatus1 site
- Turseodus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Carinacanthus jepseni, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- New eastern American Triassic fishes and Triassic correlations1
- New fishes from the Triassic of Pennsylvania1
Each 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Carinacanthus jepseni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- William L. Bryant (1870-1947)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Carinacanthus jepseni 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 itCarinacanthus through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bryant 1934