Molidae

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- MoloideiPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Tetraodontiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Tetraodontiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Tetraodontiformes
Time the record covers
At least 42 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
15 occurrences of Molidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
15 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
7 formations
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group5
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Ebelsberg Formation1
- Gaiman Formation1
- Choptank Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Deist Formation1
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The named rock units Molidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Molidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Molidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
855 taxa- Otodus megalodon5 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis4 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus4 sites
- Hemipristis serra4 sites
- Mysticeti4 sites
- Aetobatus3 sites
- Alopias3 sites
- Carcharhinus3 sites
- Carcharias3 sites
- Dasyatis3 sites
- Lagodon rhomboides3 sites
- Merluccius3 sites
- Mobula3 sites
- Mustelus3 sites
- Odontoceti3 sites
- Phocidae3 sites
- Pinus3 sites
- Pteromylaeus3 sites
- Raja3 sites
- Ranzania grahami3 sites
- Sphyraena barracuda3 sites
- Sphyrna3 sites
- Squatina3 sites
- Thecachampsa antiquus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Molidae, 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
13 references- Geology and biostratigraphy of the Potomac River Cliffs at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia2
- Miocene and Pliocene Molidae (Ranzania, Mola) from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina (Pisces: Tetraodontiformes)2
- The upper Miocene Deurne Member of the Diest Formation revisited: unexpected results from the study of a large temporary outcrop near Antwerp International Airport, Belgium1
- Fossil-collecting from the middle Miocene Carmel Church Quarry marine ecosystem in Caroline County, Virginia1
- A giant early Miocene sunfish from the North Alpine foreland basin (Austria) and its implication for molid phylogeny1
- Fossil fishes from the Serravallian (Middle Miocene) of Torricella Peligna, Italy1
- USNM Chesapeake Group Cetacean Collection Data1
- The earliest known member of the rorqual-gray whale clade (Mammalia, Cetacea)1
- Review and reconstructions of the tetraodontiform fishes from the Eocene of Monte Bolca, Italy, with comments on related Tertiary taxa1
- The Neogene sharks, rays, and bony fishes from Lee Creek Mine, Aurora, North Carolina1
- Ranzania ogaii, a new Miocene slender mola from Saitama, Japan (Pisces: Tetraodontiforms)1
- New genus of primitive ocean sunfish with separate premaxillae from the Eocene of Southwest Russia (Molidae, Tetraodontiformes)1
Each of the 15 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. 1 further reference is 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 Molidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Molidae 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMoloidei through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.