Lepisosteus osseus

The longnose gar, also known as longnose garpike or billy gar, is a ray-finned fish in the family Lepisosteidae. The genus may have been present in North America for about 100 million years. References are made to gars being a primitive group of bony fish because they have retained some primitive features, such as a spiral valve intestine, but they are not primitive in the sense of not being fully developed.

Lepisosteus osseus

USFWS Mountain-Prairie · 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
LepisosteusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Lepisosteiformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Lepisosteiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Lepisosteiformes
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Lepisosteiformes

Time the record covers

At least 762 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 2 of 3 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 3 occurrences1.8–1.8 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–997 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences997 ka–920 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences920 ka–843 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences843 ka–767 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences767 ka–690 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences690 ka–613 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences613 ka–537 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences537 ka–460 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences460 ka–383 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences383 ka–307 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences307 ka–230 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences230 ka–153 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences77 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence774 ka11.7 ka2.3 Mya0 Mya

3 occurrences of Lepisosteus osseus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

3 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

2 formations

Kingsdown — 37.04°N, 100.50°WBermont — 27.70°N, 82.50°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Lepisosteus osseus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Lepisosteus osseus and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Lepisosteus osseus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

248 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Lepisosteus osseus, 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

3 references

Each of the 3 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 Lepisosteus osseus

Credit
USFWS Mountain-Prairie
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

Sequential Section Scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Lepisosteus osseus · MCZ:SC:1362

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 itLepisosteus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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