Piscolithax
Uncredited · 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
- PhocoenidaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Phocoenidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At most 6.3 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Piscolithax on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
7 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
3 formations
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The named rock units Piscolithax has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Piscolithax and its relatives
MioceneWhere Piscolithax and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
161 taxa- Otodus megalodon6 sites
- Monachinae5 sites
- Phocoenidae5 sites
- Alosidae4 sites
- Balaenopteridae4 sites
- Cetotheriidae4 sites
- Megatheriidae4 sites
- Myliobatis4 sites
- Phalacrocorax4 sites
- Spheniscidae4 sites
- Sula4 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias3 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis3 sites
- Pelagornis3 sites
- Spheniscus urbinai3 sites
- Acrophoca2 sites
- Acrophoca longirostris2 sites
- Ariidae2 sites
- Balaenoptera siberi2 sites
- Carcharhinus2 sites
- Carnivora2 sites
- Cyonasua2 sites
- Delphinapterinae2 sites
- Eusuchia2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Piscolithax, 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
4 references- Geology and paleontology of late Cenozoic marine deposits in the Sacaco area (Peru)3
- Fossil odontocetes (Mammalia: Cetacea) from the Almejas Formation, Isla Cedros, Mexico2
- Oldest record of monk seals from the North Pacific and biogeographic implications1
- Un nouveau Phocoenidae (Cetacea) du Pliocene inferieur du Perou1
Each of the 7 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 content1
Picture of Piscolithax
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Piscolithax 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 itPhocoenidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Muizon 1983