Hemiscyllium
Hemiscyllium is a genus of carpet shark in the family Hemiscylliidae.

User:Strobilomyces · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- HemiscylliidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Orectolobiformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Orectolobiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Orectolobiformes
Time the record covers
At least 75 million years on record.
The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 33.9 Mya.
55 occurrences of Hemiscyllium 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
55 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
25 formations
- Marnes de Donzacq Formation7
- Hunstanton Formation4
- Selsey Formation · Bracklesham Group3
- Marnes de Miretrain Formation2
- Miretrain Marl Formation2
- Rødvig Formation2
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The named rock units Hemiscyllium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. One further formation holds fewer occurrences and is not listed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Hemiscyllium and its relatives
EoceneWhere Hemiscyllium and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
635 taxa- Dasyatis16 sites
- Heterodontus vincenti15 sites
- Scyliorhinus15 sites
- Premontreia (Oxyscyllium) gilberti14 sites
- Rhinobatos13 sites
- Burnhamia daviesi12 sites
- Galeorhinus12 sites
- Coupatezia11 sites
- Crassescyliorhinus germanicus11 sites
- Gymnura11 sites
- Heterodontus11 sites
- Rhynchobatus vincenti11 sites
- Squatina11 sites
- Squatina prima11 sites
- Iago10 sites
- Isurus praecursor10 sites
- Pararhincodon germaini10 sites
- Abdounia recticona9 sites
- Pararhincodon9 sites
- Rhinobatoidei9 sites
- Striatolamia macrota9 sites
- Torpedo pessanti9 sites
- Coupatezia woutersi8 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 52 sites for Hemiscyllium, 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
26 references- Nouvelle faunes de sélaciens (Elasmobranchii, Neoselachii) de l'Eocène moyen des Landes (Sud-Ouest, France). Implication dans la connaissance des communautés de sélaciens d'eau profondes9
- Late Cretaceous and Danian neoselachians from southern Sweden8
- Albian and Cenomanian selachian assemblages from north-east England4
- Crossing the boundary: an elasmobranch fauna from Stevns Klint, Denmark3
- The Selsey Division (Bracklesham Group) at Lee-on-the-Solent, Gosport, (Hants)3
- Neoselachians from the Danian (Early Paleocene) of Denmark2
- Shark and ray faunas in the Middle and Late Eocene of the Fayum Area, Egypt2
- Contribution of Eocene sharks and rays from southern France to the history of deep-sea selachians2
- Structure and ichthyofauna of the upper part of Eocene sediments in Belogorsk area (Crimea)2
- New biostratigraphical data on the marine Upper Cretaceous and Palaeogene of Jordan2
- Les Orectolobiformes, Carcharhiniformes et Myliobatiformes (Elasmobranchii, Neoselachii) des bassins à phosphate du Maroc (Maastrichtien-Lutétien basal). Systématique, biostratigraphie, évolution et dynamique des faunes2
- Fossils from the Bracklesham Group exposed in the M27 Motorway excavations, Southampton, Hampshire2
Each of the 55 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. 14 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Hemiscyllium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Strobilomyces
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Hemiscyllium was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- 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 itHemiscylliidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Smith 1837