Gymnura altavela

The spiny butterfly ray or giant butterfly ray is a species of butterfly ray, family Gymnuridae, native to the shallow coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean. A large ray that can measure over 2 m across, it may be distinguished from the sympatric smooth butterfly ray by the spine at the base of its tail and by a small tentacular structure on the margin of each spiracle. Slow-reproducing and valued for its meat, in recent decades its population has experienced a decline of over 30%, and it has become Critically Endangered in certain parts of its range.

Gymnura altavela

NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center · 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
GymnuraPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Myliobatiformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Myliobatiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Myliobatiformes

Time the record covers

At most 4.3 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 27.3 Mya and 23.04 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Oligocene — about 1 of 1 occurrenceOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence27–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences24–23 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences23–23 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences23–23 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences23–23 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27.8 Mya22.5 Mya

1 occurrence of Gymnura altavela on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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

1 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.

Found in

1 formation

Sternberg — 53.67°N, 11.82°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Gymnura altavela has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Gymnura altavela and its relatives

Oligocene

Where Gymnura altavela and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.

Found in the same rock

15 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Gymnura altavela, 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 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 Gymnura altavela

Credit
NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gymnura altavela 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 itGymnura through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on

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