Pachythrissops
Pachythrissops is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish. It contains two species, P. laevis from the Purbeckian of England and P. propterus from the Tithonian of Germany. A third species, P. vectensis, has been reassigned to the elopiform genus Arratiaelops. Pachythrissops is often regarded as one of the most primitive members of the order Ichthyodectiformes; however, a phylogenetic analysis by Cavin et al. (2013) placed it and the related genus Ascalabothrissops outside the group.

User:Haplochromis · CC BY-SA 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
- IchthyodectiformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ichthyodectiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Ichthyodectiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ichthyodectiformes
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 145.06 Mya to 125.77 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 152.21 Mya to 119.57 Mya.
6 occurrences of Pachythrissops on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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
4 formations
- Solnhofen Formation2
- Wadhurst Clay Formation · Wealden Group1
- Arcillas de Morella Formation1
- Sainte-Barbe Clays Formation · Wealden Group1
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The named rock units Pachythrissops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pachythrissops and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Pachythrissops and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
164 taxa- Scheenstia mantelli4 sites
- Theropoda4 sites
- Allothrissops mesogaster2 sites
- Amiopsis lepidota2 sites
- Baryonychinae2 sites
- Iguanodon2 sites
- Lepidotes2 sites
- Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis2 sites
- Ophiopsiella attenuata2 sites
- Reptilia2 sites
- Theriosuchus2 sites
- Thrissops formosus2 sites
- Acanthochirana cordata1 site
- Adiantites1 site
- Aeger spinipes1 site
- Aeger tipularius1 site
- Aethalion robustus1 site
- Aigialosauridae1 site
- Albuliformes1 site
- Algites1 site
- Allosauroidea1 site
- Allothrissops salmoneus1 site
- Amiopsis dolloi1 site
- Anaethalion knorri1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Pachythrissops, 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
6 references- Fauna and predator-prey relationships of Ettling, an actinopterygian fish-dominated Konservat-Lagerstätte from the Late Jurassic of Southern Germany1
- A tiny maniraptoran dinosaur in the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Group: evidence from a new vertebrate-bearing locality in south-east England1
- Quinet, 19691
- Los vertebrados del Cretácico Español [The vertebrates from the Spanish Cretaceous]1
- Sur le faciès wealdien d'Espagne [On the Wealden facies of Spain]1
- Monographie der fossilien Fische aus den Lithographischen Schiefern Bayerns1
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 content2
Picture of Pachythrissops
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Synchrotron Imaging scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Pachythrissops laevis · nhmuk:pal:PV P 41859
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 itIchthyodectiformes through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Woodward 1919