Janassa
Janassa is an extinct genus of petalodont cartilaginous fish that lived in marine environments in what is now central United States of America and Europe during the Carboniferous and upper Permian.

Ta-tea-two-te-to · CC BY 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
- JanassinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Petalodontiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Petalodontiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Petalodontiformes
Time the record covers
At least 70 million years on record.
The record covers at least 330.3 Mya to 259.857 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 358.86 Mya to 254.14 Mya.
47 occurrences of Janassa on record, most of them in the Permian. 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
47 occurrences- Carboniferous34%
- Permian66%
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
12 formations
- Kupferschiefer Formation10
- Phosphoria Formation5
- Zechstein Formation5
- Lueders Formation · Wichita Group2
- Ichinotani Formation2
- Wreford Limestone Formation · Chase Group2
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The named rock units Janassa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Janassa and its relatives
PermianWhere Janassa and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.
Found in the same rock
215 taxa- Palaeoniscus freieslebeni6 sites
- Pygopterus humboldti6 sites
- Ctenacanthus5 sites
- Acrolepis sedgwickii4 sites
- Polidevcia bellistriata4 sites
- Strepsodus sauroides4 sites
- Acentrophorus glaphyrus3 sites
- Coelacanthus granulatus3 sites
- Ctenoptychius apicalis3 sites
- Menaspis armata3 sites
- Palaeoniscus macrophthalmus3 sites
- Petalodus3 sites
- Petalodus acuminatus3 sites
- Platysomus gibbosus3 sites
- Platysomus macrurus3 sites
- Prodentalium canna3 sites
- Reticulolepis exsculpta3 sites
- Rhizodopsis sauroides3 sites
- Wodnika striatula3 sites
- Chondrichthyes2 sites
- Cladodus2 sites
- Cochliodontidae2 sites
- Crassidonta stuckenbergi2 sites
- Crinoidea2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 40 sites for Janassa, 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
23 references- Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum (Natural History) Part 19
- Die Fischreste der küstennahen Sedimente des unteren Zechstein 1 Westdeutschlands4
- Janassa korni (Weigelt) - Neubeschreibung eines petalodonten Elasmobranchiers aus dem Kupferschiefer und Zechsteinkalk (Perm) von Eisleben (Sachsen-Anhalt)3
- The Lower Embar of Wyoming and Its Fauna3
- A synopsis of the classification of the British Palaeozoic rocks, with a systematic description of the British Palaeozoic fossils.Fasciculus 3, Mollusca and Palaeozoic fishes3
- The chondrichthyan tooth remains from the Carboniferous and Permian of Fukuji, Gifu Prefecture, central Japan2
- Marine to Onshore Vertebrates in the Lower Permian of Kansas and their Paleoenvironmental Implications2
- Vertebrate Fossils from the Lueders Formation, Lower Permian of North-Central Texas.2
- Paleontology and stratigraphy of the Phosphoria Formation2
- Carboniferous fishes from the central western States2
- Ueber einige Placoiden im Kupferschiefer zu Richelsdorf2
- Ueber einige merkwürdige Fische aus dem Kupferschiefer und dem Muschelkalk2
Each of the 47 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. 11 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 Janassa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ta-tea-two-te-to
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Janassa 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Janassa”
- 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 itJanassinae through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.