Pycnodontiformes
Pycnodontiformes is an extinct order of primarily marine bony fish. The group first appeared during the Late Triassic and disappeared during the Eocene. The group has been found in rock formations in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America.

John J. Cawley, Giuseppe Marramà, Giorgio Carnevale, Jaime A. Villafaña, Faviel A. López-Romero, Jürgen Kriwet · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- NeopterygiiPBDB
- Diet
- durophage, carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 211 million years on record.
The record covers at least 211.18 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 215.38 Mya to 11.7 ka.
622 occurrences of Pycnodontiformes on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
622 occurrences- Late Triassic2%
- Early Jurassic1%
- Middle Jurassic3%
- Late Jurassic7%
- Early Cretaceous26%
- Late Cretaceous48%
- Paleocene3%
- Eocene9%
- Mioceneunder 1%
- Pleistoceneunder 1%
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
181 formations
- Paluxy Formation · Trinity Group18
- Greenhorn Limestone Formation · Colorado Group14
- La Huérguina Formation13
- Carlile Shale Formation · Colorado Group10
- Korallenkalk Formation9
- Akrabou Formation8
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The named rock units Pycnodontiformes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 157 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 187 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pycnodontiformes and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Pycnodontiformes and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
3,417 taxa- Pycnodontidae55 sites
- Lepidotes45 sites
- Theropoda39 sites
- Crocodylia37 sites
- Hybodus35 sites
- Pycnodus29 sites
- Testudines29 sites
- Anura26 sites
- Stephanodus24 sites
- Teleostei23 sites
- Enchodus19 sites
- Pseudohypolophus mcnultyi18 sites
- Squamata18 sites
- Anomoeodus phaseolus17 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata17 sites
- Squalicorax pristodontus17 sites
- Caturus16 sites
- Ischyrhiza mira16 sites
- Amiidae15 sites
- Lepisosteidae15 sites
- Squalicorax kaupi15 sites
- Belonostomus14 sites
- Coelodus14 sites
- Crocodyliformes14 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 450 sites for Pycnodontiformes, and this reads 240 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
304 references- Lower vertebrate faunas of the Trinity Division on north-central Texas18
- New insight into pycnodontiform fishes16
- Jura Vaudois et Neuchatelois13
- Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum (Natural History), Part III12
- Fosilne ribe Komena, Mrzleka, Hvara i M. Libanona uz dodatak o Oligocenskim ribama Tüffera, Zagora i Trifalja10
- Stratigraphy and Paleobiology of the Upper Cretaceous - Lower Paleogene Sediments from the Trans-Saharan Seaway in Mali9
- Ueber die im Korallenkalk des Lindner Berges bei Hannover vorkommenden Ueberreste von Fischen, mit Beschreibung und Abbildung einiger neuen Arten [On the remains of fishes occurring in the Coral Chalk of Lindner Mountain in Hannover, with description and images of some new forms]9
- The English Chalk and London Clay: two remarkable British bony fish Lagerstatten8
- Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) chondrichthyes and osteichthyes from northeastern Iberia7
- Late Cretaceous (Campanian) actinopterygian fishes from the Kristianstad Basin of southern Sweden7
- Nursallia tethysensis sp. nov., a new pycnodont fish (Neopterygii: †Halecostomi) from the Cenomanian of Lebanon7
- The Umm Himar Formation (Paleocene) of Saudi Arabia and Associated Strata: Stratigraphy, Vertebrate Fauna, and Paleoenvironment7
Each of the 622 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. 292 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 Pycnodontiformes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- John J. Cawley, Giuseppe Marramà, Giorgio Carnevale, Jaime A. Villafaña, Faviel A. López-Romero, Jürgen Kriwet
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pycnodontiformes was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itNeopterygii through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Berg 1937