Echelus myrus

The painted eel is an eel in the family Ophichthidae. It was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, originally under the genus Muraena. It is a marine, subtropical eel which is known from the eastern Atlantic Ocean, including the Bay of Biscay, the Republic of Congo, and the Mediterranean. It dwells at a depth range of 3 to 12 metres, and inhabits burrows formed in sand and mud sediments in coastal lagoons and estuaries. Males can reach a maximum total length of 100 centimetres (39 in), but more commonly reach a TL of 60 centimetres (24 in).

Echelus myrus

Bloch, Marcus Elieser, 1723-1799; Schneider, Johann Gottlob, 1750-1822, ed; Hennig, J. F. (Johann Friedrich), b. ca.… · No restrictions · 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
EchelusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Anguilliformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Anguilliformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Anguilliformes

Time the record covers

At most 6.7 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 13.82 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Miocene — about 2 of 2 occurrencesMiocene21–20 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences20.9 Mya13.3 Mya

2 occurrences of Echelus myrus 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

2 occurrences

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.

Echelus myrus and its relatives

Miocene

Where Echelus myrus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

114 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Echelus myrus, 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

1 reference

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 Echelus myrus

Credit
Bloch, Marcus Elieser, 1723-1799; Schneider, Johann Gottlob, 1750-1822, ed; Hennig, J. F. (Johann Friedrich), b. ca.…
Licence
No restrictions
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Echelus myrus 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 itEchelus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)