Macrepistius
Macrepistius is an extinct genus of prehistoric ray-finned fish that lived during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous epoch. It is known from the Lower Cretaceous marine deposits of the Glen Rose Formation in north-central Texas, and measured 30 cm long.
G. Scott · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- OphiopsiellidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At most 78 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 143.1 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
10 occurrences of Macrepistius on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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
10 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
5 formations
- Paluxy Formation · Trinity Group6
- Twin Mountains Formation · Trinity Group1
- Walnut Clay Formation · Fredericksburg Group1
- Glen Rose Limestone Formation · Trinity Group1
- Glen Rose Formation1
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The named rock units Macrepistius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Macrepistius and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Macrepistius and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
49 taxa- Pseudohypolophus mcnultyi7 sites
- Lepidotes5 sites
- Prosiren elinorae4 sites
- Astroconodon denisoni3 sites
- Callodus coronatus3 sites
- Crocodylia3 sites
- Leptostyrax macrorhiza3 sites
- Melvius3 sites
- Parvodus parvidens3 sites
- Anguidae2 sites
- Discoglossidae2 sites
- Enchodus2 sites
- Gobiates2 sites
- Hybodus2 sites
- Lacertilia2 sites
- Palaeobalistum rectidens2 sites
- Paramicrodon estesi2 sites
- Proscinetes2 sites
- Rhinobatos2 sites
- Testudines2 sites
- Amiidae1 site
- Anomoeodus1 site
- Archaeolamna kopingensis1 site
- Belonostomus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Macrepistius, 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- Early Cretaceous (Comanchean) vertebrates of central Texas4
- Lower vertebrate faunas of the Trinity Division on north-central Texas4
- The Braincase of the Holostean Fish Macrepistius, with Comments on Neurocranial Ossification in the Actinopterygii1
- New and little known Paleozoic and Mesozoic fishes1
Each of the 10 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 content1
Picture of Macrepistius
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- G. Scott
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Macrepistius 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 itOphiopsiellidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1894