Dentex ovatus

Sylvain Le Bris · CC BY-NC 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- DentexPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Perciformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Perciformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Perciformes
Time the record covers
At most 15 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 41.03 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Dentex ovatus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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- Eocene100%
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
2 formations
- Selsey Formation · Bracklesham Group2
- Aalter Formation1
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The named rock units Dentex ovatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Dentex ovatus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dentex ovatus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
122 taxa- Apogon bellovacinus3 sites
- Abdounia2 sites
- Abdounia lapierrei2 sites
- Aetobatus irregularis2 sites
- Aetomylaeus dixoni2 sites
- Aetomylaeus striatus2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Brachycarcharias lerichei2 sites
- Burnhamia2 sites
- Burnhamia daviesi2 sites
- Callionymus2 sites
- Carcharias2 sites
- Carcharias acutissimus2 sites
- Chelone2 sites
- Conger2 sites
- Coupatezia woutersi2 sites
- Cylindracanthus rectus2 sites
- Dasyatis jaekeli2 sites
- Egertonia2 sites
- Eosolea bartonensis2 sites
- Eostegostoma2 sites
- Eotrigonodon serratus2 sites
- Foumtizia pattersoni2 sites
- Galeocerdo latidens2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Dentex ovatus, 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- The Selsey Division (Bracklesham Group) at Lee-on-the-Solent, Gosport, (Hants)2
- Sur la faune ichthyologique des formations du Panisel et de Den Hoorn (Eocène Belge)1
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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Dentex ovatus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Sylvain Le Bris
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan of Dentex ovatus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDentex through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Frost 1934