Mugil
Mugil is a genus of mullet in the family Mugilidae. Members of Mugil are found worldwide in tropical and temperate coastal marine waters, but may also enter estuaries and rivers.

Roberto Pillon · CC BY 3.0 · 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
- MugilidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 0 Mya.
25 occurrences of Mugil on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
25 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
11 formations
- Tamiami Formation2
- Bermont Formation2
- Raz-el-Ain Formation2
- Fort Thompson Formation1
- Cantaure Formation1
- Gatun Formation1
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The named rock units Mugil has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mugil and its relatives
MioceneWhere Mugil and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
693 taxa- Alligator mississippiensis7 sites
- Equus7 sites
- Lepisosteus7 sites
- Archosargus probatocephalus6 sites
- Dasypus bellus6 sites
- Kinosternon6 sites
- Lepomis microlophus6 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus6 sites
- Rana6 sites
- Siren6 sites
- Amia calva5 sites
- Chelydra serpentina5 sites
- Clupeidae5 sites
- Mammut americanum5 sites
- Paramylodon harlani5 sites
- Pogonias cromis5 sites
- Apalone ferox4 sites
- Arius4 sites
- Atractosteus spatula4 sites
- Bufo4 sites
- Carcharhinus leucas4 sites
- Carcharias taurus4 sites
- Dasyatis4 sites
- Fundulus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Mugil, 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- Fossil marine fishes and the ʻLago Mareʼ event: Has the Mediterranean ever transformed into a brackish lake?2
- Giant-toothed White Sharks and Wide-toothed Mako (Lamnidae) from the Venezuela Neogene: Their Role in the Caribbean, Shallow-water Fish Assemblage2
- New Record of Capybara (Rodentia: Caviidae: Hydrochoerinae) from the Pleistocene of San Diego County, California with Remarks on Their Biogeography and Dispersal in the Pleistocene of Western North America1
- The uppermost Oligocene of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône, Southern France): A Cenozoic brackish subtropical Konservat Lagerstätte, with fishes, insects and plants1
- Paléobiodiversité et paléoenvironnements: l’exemple des gisements de poissons téléostéens du Messinien préévaporitique d’Oran et du bassin du Chélif (Algérie)1
- Stratigraphy of the Maikop Group and Pteropoda Beds in Northern Azerbaijan1
- Volhynian (early Sarmatian sensu lato) fishes from Tsurevsky, North Caucasus, Russia1
- Early Holocene Vertebrate Paleontology1
- Vertebrate Paleontology1
- Povoado muculmano na Ponta do Castelo (Aljezur)1
- Bathymetric distribution of Miocene to Pleistocene Caribbean teleostean fishes from the coast of Panama and Costa Rica1
- Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) vertebrate faunas from coastal Georgia1
Each of the 25 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 content2
Picture of Mugil
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Roberto Pillon
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Mugil cephalus · UWFC:ADULT COLLECTION:UW 011689
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Mugil”
- 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 itMugilidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758