Gilloblennius tripennis
The thripenny is a species of triplefin blenny in the genus Gilloblennius. It was described by Johann Reinhold Forster in 1801. It is endemic to New Zealand where it is found throughout the mainland and off the Three Kings Islands, Snares Island and Chatham Islands.

Luca Davenport-Thomas · 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
- GilloblenniusPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At most 770 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.4 Mya and 1.63 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Gilloblennius tripennis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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- Pleistocene100%
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
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The named rock units Gilloblennius tripennis 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.
Gilloblennius tripennis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Gilloblennius tripennis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
18 taxa- Auchenoceros2 sites
- Forsterygion bathytaton2 sites
- Gnathophis2 sites
- Hemerocoetes monopterygius2 sites
- Dermatopsis joergennielseni1 site
- Forsterygion jawadi1 site
- Forsterygion malcolmi1 site
- Gnathophis umbrellabius1 site
- Gobiopterus1 site
- Macruronus novaezeelandiae1 site
- Paratrachichthys1 site
- Peltorhamphus novaezeelandiae1 site
- Pseudophycis bachus1 site
- Pseudophycis barbata1 site
- Pseudophycis breviuscula1 site
- Pseudophycis marginata1 site
- Rhombosolea1 site
- Ruanoho whero1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Gilloblennius tripennis, 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
1 referenceEach 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 content2
Picture of Gilloblennius tripennis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Luca Davenport-Thomas
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Gilloblennius tripennis · UF:Fish:80189
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, “Thripenny”
- 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 itGilloblennius through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Forster 1801)