Leiognathus
Leiognathus is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes, ponyfishes from the family Leiognathidae. They are native to the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean. They are sometimes known as silverbellies.

George Henry Ford · 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
- LeiognathidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 4.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 23.04 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
5 occurrences of Leiognathus 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
5 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.
Leiognathus and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Leiognathus and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
75 taxa- Pomolobus facilis2 sites
- Pristigenys spinosus2 sites
- Rupelia rata2 sites
- Acanthognathus incolumis1 site
- Acmaea simplex1 site
- Alosa sculptata1 site
- Amusium (Pseudamussium)1 site
- Anenchelum glarisianum1 site
- Archaeus glarisianus1 site
- Aulostomus fractus1 site
- Brachidontes1 site
- Capros longirostris1 site
- Capros radobojanus1 site
- Carcharias acutissimus1 site
- Carcharias contortidens1 site
- Carcharias cuspidatus1 site
- Chama fimbriata1 site
- Chlamys biarritzensis1 site
- Clupea longimana1 site
- Cordiopsis incrassata1 site
- Cubariomma yanakuzminae1 site
- Cyrena1 site
- Cyrena incompta1 site
- Diaphus duosensitivus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Leiognathus, 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
4 references- Fauna Fosila din Oligocenul de la Piatra Neamt2
- Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic fish faunas of Japan1
- Les otolithes des téléostéens de l'oligo-miocène Belge1
- Bony fishes of the Maikop deposits of the Caucasus1
Each of the 5 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. 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 content2
Picture of Leiognathus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- George Henry Ford
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Leiognathus equulus · VIMS:VIMS:7482
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, “Leiognathus”
- 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 itLeiognathidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lacépède 1802