Protospinax

Protospinax is an extinct genus of cartilaginous fish from the Middle to Late Jurassic of Europe and Russia. The type species, P. annectans, was found in the Solnhofen limestones of southern Bavaria. Formerly known from only two specimens, further museum specimens of P. annectans were discovered at the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University in the 1990s, having been misidentified as Squatina and Heterodontus. Six more species, all known only from isolated teeth, have been assigned to Protospinax, though only four including the type species remain valid. It was a relatively small shark, with the largest uncatalogued specimen of P. annectans measuring about 1.63 metres (5.3 ft) long.

Protospinax

High Contrast · CC BY 3.0 de · 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
ProtospinacidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Chondrichthyes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Chondrichthyes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Chondrichthyes

Time the record covers

At least 110 million years on record.

The record covers at least 182.9 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 66 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 29 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 6 of 29 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 11 of 29 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 8 of 29 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 2 of 29 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 29 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 29 occurrences204–199 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences199–195 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences195–190 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences190–185 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences185–181 Mya — about 2 occurrences181–176 Mya — about 3 occurrences176–171 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences171–167 Mya — about 2 occurrences167–162 Mya — about 8 occurrences162–157 Mya — about 1 occurrence157–152 Mya — about 2 occurrences152–148 Mya — about 2 occurrences148–143 Mya — about 3 occurrences143–138 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences138–134 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences134–129 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences129–124 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 1 occurrence120–115 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences115–110 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences110–106 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–96 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences73–68 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences68–63 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences182.9 Mya72.2 Mya204 Mya63 Mya

29 occurrences of Protospinax on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. 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

29 occurrences

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

7 formations

Solnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°EJasna Gora — 50.46°N, 19.51°EKimmeridge Clay — 50.63°N, 2.34°WSot de Chera — 41.12°N, 0.83°WHythe — 51.24°N, 0.05°WAtherfield Clay — 51.23°N, 0.25°WTor — 55.32°N, 12.44°E

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The named rock units Protospinax has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Protospinax and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Protospinax and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

198 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Protospinax, 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

16 references

Each of the 29 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. 4 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 Protospinax

Credit
High Contrast
Licence
CC BY 3.0 de
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itProtospinacidae through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Woodward 1919