Nematoptychius greenocki
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.

(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
- NematoptychiusPBDB
- 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.
33 occurrences of Nematoptychius greenocki 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
33 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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 Formation · Strathclyde Group13
- West Lothian Oil Shale Formation · Strathclyde Group10
- Lower Limestone Formation · Cementstone Group3
- Limestone Coal Formation · Clackmannan Group2
- Anstruther Formation · Cementstone Group1
- Gullane ? Formation · Calciferous sandstone Group1
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The named rock units Nematoptychius greenocki has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Nematoptychius greenocki and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Nematoptychius greenocki and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
35 taxa- Notacmon crenatus20 sites
- Elonichthys robisoni18 sites
- Rhadinichthys carinatus14 sites
- Cosmoptychius striatus13 sites
- Gonatodus punctatus11 sites
- Rhadinichthys ornatissimus8 sites
- Ctenacanthidae7 sites
- Watsonichthys pectinatus7 sites
- Acanthodes sulcatus5 sites
- Eurynotus4 sites
- Rhadinichthys brevis4 sites
- Tristychius arcuatus4 sites
- Elonichthys striatulus3 sites
- Elonichthys multistriatus2 sites
- Pseudogonatodus macrolepis2 sites
- Rhadinichthys2 sites
- Amphicentrum crassum1 site
- Amphicentrum granulosum1 site
- Blairolepis loanheadensis1 site
- Cladodontidae1 site
- Diplodoselache woodi1 site
- Elonichthys1 site
- Ganopristodus lobatus1 site
- Holuridae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 32 sites for Nematoptychius greenocki, 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- The early diversification of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii): hypotheses, challenges and future prospects20
- Recent discoveries of Carboniferous fishes in Edinburgh8
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates3
- Report on Fossil Fishes collected by the Geological Survey of Scotland from Shales exposed on the Shore near Gullane, East Lothian1
- IV.—Notes on the Lower Carboniferous Fishes of Eastern Fifeshire1
Each of the 33 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 greenocki
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- (Traquair, 1867)
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nematoptychius greenocki 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 itNematoptychius through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Traquair 1866