Holostei
Holostei is a group of ray-finned bony fish. It is divided into two major clades, the Halecomorphi, represented by the single living genus, Amia with two species, the bowfins, as well as the Ginglymodi, the sole living representatives being the gars (Lepisosteidae), represented by seven living species in two genera. The earliest members of the clade, which are putative "semionotiforms" such as Acentrophorus and Archaeolepidotus, are known from the Middle to Late Permian and are among the earliest known neopterygians.

Uncredited · 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
- NeopterygiiPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 274 million years on record.
The record covers at least 274.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 290.1 Mya to 0 Mya.
901 occurrences of Holostei on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
901 occurrences- Permianunder 1%
- Middle Triassic6%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassic2%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassic7%
- Early Cretaceous15%
- Late Cretaceous54%
- Paleocene4%
- Eocene9%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene2%
- Pleistoceneunder 1%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
211 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group139
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group68
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group34
- Ferris Formation28
- Besano Formation28
- Lance Formation26
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The named rock units Holostei has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 187 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 87 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Holostei and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Holostei and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2,367 taxa- Trionychidae108 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus105 sites
- Scapherpeton tectum104 sites
- Lepisosteus occidentalis97 sites
- Ceratopsidae91 sites
- Baenidae81 sites
- Teleostei78 sites
- Hadrosauridae74 sites
- Opisthotriton kayi74 sites
- Chelydridae73 sites
- Champsosaurus70 sites
- Theropoda70 sites
- Anura69 sites
- Lepisosteus66 sites
- Crocodylia64 sites
- Adocus58 sites
- Belonostomus longirostris56 sites
- Amiidae55 sites
- Paronychodon55 sites
- Borealosuchus sternbergii54 sites
- Brachychampsa montana54 sites
- Paralbula casei53 sites
- Multituberculata52 sites
- Aves50 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 671 sites for Holostei, and this reads 240 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
357 references- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota49
- New holostean fishes (Actinopterygii: Neopterygii) from the Middle Triassic of the Monte San Giorgio (Canton Ticino, Switzerland)42
- Paleoecology of an estuarine, incised-valley fill in the Dinosaur Park Formation (Judith River Group, Upper Cretaceous) of southern Alberta, Canada39
- Vertebrate microsite assemblages (exclusive of mammals) from the Foremost and Oldman Formations of the Judith River Group (Campanian) of southeastern Alberta: an illustrated guide37
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections36
- Vertebrate faunal changes through Lancian and Puercan time in southern Wyoming30
- A new genus and species of Amiidae (Holostei; Osteichthyes) from the Late Cretaceous of North America, with comments on the phylogeny of the Amiidae24
- Monographie der fossilien Fische aus den Lithographischen Schiefern Bayerns24
- Patterns of geographic variation in latest Cretaceous vertebrates: evidence from the turtle component23
- Paleontology of the Judith River Formation (Campanian) of Dinosaur National Park, Alberta, Canada: evidence from vertebrate microfossil locality20
- Vertebrate paleontology of the Cloverly Formation (Lower Cretaceous), I: faunal composition, biogeographic relationships, and sampling13
- Fossil vertebrates from the Late Cretaceous Lance Formation, eastern Wyoming13
Each of the 901 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. 345 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 Holostei
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Holostei”
- 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 itNeopterygii through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Müller 1846)