Centracanthus
Centracanthus is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Sparidae, the seabreams and porgies. There is a single extant species in this genus, as well as an extinct species classified within the genus. The extant species is found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea.

Uncredited · 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
- CentracanthidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 27 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 13.82 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.63 Mya.
2 occurrences of Centracanthus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
2 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Centracanthus 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.
Centracanthus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Centracanthus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Ampheristus1 site
- Apogon glaber1 site
- Ariidae1 site
- Bathyclupea1 site
- Bregmaceros1 site
- Cepola rostislavi1 site
- Chaunax1 site
- Conger1 site
- Diaphus1 site
- Elops miiformis1 site
- Epigonus1 site
- Glyptophidium1 site
- Glyptophidum major1 site
- Grammonus1 site
- Haemulon1 site
- Haemulon strascinate1 site
- Merlucciidae1 site
- Myripristis1 site
- Neobythites auribatianus1 site
- Neobythites bozzolo1 site
- Neobythitinae1 site
- Nolfophidion tumidus1 site
- Opisthoproctus1 site
- Paraulopus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Centracanthus, 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
2 references- Fish otoliths from the Lutetian of the Aquitaine Basin (SW France), a breakthrough in the knowledge of the European Eocene ichthyofauna1
- Fish otoliths from the Konkian (Miocene, early Serravallian) of Mangyshlak (Kazakhstan): testimony to an early endemic evolution in the Eastern Paratethys1
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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Centracanthus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Centracanthus 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 itCentracanthidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rafinesque 1810