Pimelodidae

Monika Betley · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- SiluroideiPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Siluriformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Siluriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Siluriformes
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Siluriformes
Time the record covers
At least 26 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 129 ka.
33 occurrences of Pimelodidae 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
33 occurrences- Oligocene9%
- Miocene78%
- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene3%
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
13 formations
- Solimoes Formation7
- Villavieja Formation · Honda Group5
- Urumaco Formation5
- Castilletes Formation2
- Chambira Formation2
- Pebas Formation2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Pimelodidae 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.
Pimelodidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Pimelodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
374 taxa- Doradidae6 sites
- Serrasalmidae6 sites
- Aves5 sites
- Caimaninae5 sites
- Callichthyidae5 sites
- Hydrolycus5 sites
- Mylodontidae5 sites
- Phractocephalus5 sites
- Purussaurus5 sites
- Alligatoridae4 sites
- Caviomorpha4 sites
- Characiformes4 sites
- Cichlidae4 sites
- Dasyatidae4 sites
- Gavialidae4 sites
- Loricariidae4 sites
- Pampatheriidae4 sites
- Podocnemididae4 sites
- Potamotrygon canaanorum4 sites
- Scirrotherium4 sites
- Anura3 sites
- Characidae3 sites
- Chelonoidis3 sites
- Leporinus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Pimelodidae, 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
15 references- A new cajaro catfish (Siluriformes : Pimelodidae : Phractocephalus) from the Late Miocene of southwestern Amazonia and its relationship to Phractocephalus nassi of the Urumaco Formation7
- The late Miocene Phractocephalus catfish (Siluriformes: Pimelodidae) from Urumaco, Venezuela: additional specimens and reinterpretation as a distinct species5
- Freshwater Fishes and their paleobiotic implications4
- A 60-million-year Cenozoic history of western Amazonian ecosystems in Contamana, eastern Peru3
- A Pliocene–Pleistocene continental biota from Venezuela2
- A new vertebrate continental assemblage from the Tortonian of Venezuela2
- Revised stratigraphy of Neogene strata in the Cocinetas Basin, La Guajira, Colombia2
- A fossil fish assemblage from the middle Miocene of the Cocinetas Basin, northern Colombia1
- Biotic community and landscape changes around the Eocene–Oligocene transition at Shapaja, Peruvian Amazonia: Regional or global drivers?1
- A historical vertebrate collection from the Middle Miocene of the Peruvian Amazon1
- New vertebrates from the Late Miocene of Entre Ríos Province, Argentina: diversity, age, and paleoenvironment1
- A new Miocene vertebrate assemblage from the Rio Yuca Formation (Venezuela) and the northernmost record of typical Miocene mammals of high latitude (Patagonian) affinities in South America1
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. 3 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 content1

Picture of Pimelodidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Monika Betley
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pimelodidae was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itSiluroidei through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Eigenmann and Eigenmann 1918