Osmerus
Osmerus is a genus of smelt.

Ellen Edmonson and Hugh Chrisp · Public Domain · 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
- SalmonidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Salmoniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Salmoniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Salmoniformes
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
6 occurrences of Osmerus 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
6 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
2 formations
- Selsey Formation · Bracklesham Group1
- Haughton Formation1
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The named rock units Osmerus 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.
Osmerus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Osmerus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
219 taxa- Abdounia1 site
- Abdounia lapierrei1 site
- Abdounia recticona1 site
- Acanthonotos armatus1 site
- Acer1 site
- Acipenser toliapicus1 site
- Aequalobythites aequalis1 site
- Aetobatus1 site
- Aetobatus irregularis1 site
- Aetomylaeus dixoni1 site
- Aetomylaeus striatus1 site
- Aglyptorhynchus1 site
- Albula oweni1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Alopias1 site
- Alosa elongata1 site
- Amia1 site
- Anapterus elongatus1 site
- Anoxypristis1 site
- Antigonia angusta1 site
- Apogon bellovacinus1 site
- Archaeomanta melenhorsti1 site
- Arnoglossus sauvagei1 site
- Artiodactyla1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Osmerus, 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
3 references- Synopsis des poissons tertiaires de Licata4
- Pollen and vertebrates of the Early Neogene Haughton Formation, Devon Island, Arctic Canada1
- The Selsey Division (Bracklesham Group) at Lee-on-the-Solent, Gosport, (Hants)1
Each of the 6 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 content3
Picture of Osmerus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ellen Edmonson and Hugh Chrisp
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Osmerus eperlanus · UWFC:ADULT COLLECTION:UW 117646
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Osmerus”
- 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 itSalmonidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Forskal 1775