Nematoptychius

Nematoptychius is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish that lived from the Visean age of the Mississippian epoch to the Bashkirian age of the Pennsylvanian epoch in what is now Scotland, Belgium and France.

Nematoptychius

(Traquair, 1867) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
NematoptychiidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes

Time the record covers

At least 5.6 million years on record.

The record covers at least 335.9 Mya to 330.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 339.9 Mya to 323.6 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 34 of 34 occurrencesCarboniferous340–340 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences340–339 Mya — about 3 occurrences339–339 Mya — about 3 occurrences339–338 Mya — about 3 occurrences338–338 Mya — about 3 occurrences338–337 Mya — about 3 occurrences337–336 Mya — about 3 occurrences336–336 Mya — about 3 occurrences336–335 Mya — about 1 occurrence335–335 Mya — about 1 occurrence335–334 Mya — about 1 occurrence334–333 Mya — about 1 occurrence333–333 Mya — about 1 occurrence333–332 Mya — about 1 occurrence332–332 Mya — about 1 occurrence332–331 Mya — about 1 occurrence331–331 Mya — about 1 occurrence331–330 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences330–329 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences329–329 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences329–328 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences328–328 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences328–327 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences327–327 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences327–326 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences326–325 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences325–325 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences325–324 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences324–324 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences324–323 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences335.9 Mya330.3 Mya340.4 Mya323.1 Mya

34 occurrences of Nematoptychius on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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

34 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

9 formations

Gullane — 56.04°N, 2.83°WGullane — 55.96°N, 3.24°WGullane — 55.97°N, 3.25°WGullane — 55.88°N, 3.59°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 56.03°N, 3.14°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.89°N, 3.17°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.91°N, 3.48°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.83°N, 3.65°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.86°N, 3.55°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.80°N, 3.57°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.99°N, 3.40°WLower Limestone — 56.07°N, 3.17°WLower Limestone — 56.31°N, 2.87°WLower Limestone — 55.90°N, 3.14°WLimestone Coal — 55.88°N, 3.15°WAnstruther — 56.06°N, 3.42°WGullane ? — 55.91°N, 3.25°WLower Limestone ? — 55.73°N, 4.59°WWest Lothian Oil Shale — 55.88°N, 3.52°WUpper limestone — 55.93°N, 3.11°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Nematoptychius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Nematoptychius and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Nematoptychius and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

36 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Nematoptychius, 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

5 references

Each of the 34 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Nematoptychius

Credit
(Traquair, 1867)
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Nematoptychius 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 itNematoptychiidae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Traquair 1875