Pycnosteus

Pycnosteus is an extinct genus of jawless fish from the Devonian. It is thought to have cruised through vegetation, eating small invertebrates which it knocked loose.

Pycnosteus

Apokryltaros · CC BY-SA 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
PsammosteidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata

Time the record covers

At most 12 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 393.47 Mya and 382.31 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Devonian — about 15 of 15 occurrencesDevonian394–393 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences393–393 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences393–392 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences392–392 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences392–392 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences392–391 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences391–391 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences391–390 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences390–390 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences390–390 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences390–389 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences389–389 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences389–388 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences388–388 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences388–387 Mya — about 2 occurrences387–387 Mya — about 2 occurrences387–387 Mya — about 2 occurrences387–386 Mya — about 2 occurrences386–386 Mya — about 2 occurrences386–385 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences385–385 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences385–385 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences385–384 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences384–384 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences384–383 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences383–383 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences383–383 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences383–382 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences394 Mya381.8 Mya

15 occurrences of Pycnosteus on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

15 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

Aruküla — 57.55°N, 25.28°EAruküla — 59.37°N, 25.08°EGorodok — 55.46°N, 29.98°EVstrechnaya — 79.50°N, 96.00°ENarva — 59.38°N, 28.19°EPolotsk — 51.88°N, 26.85°EBurtnieki — 58.10°N, 25.55°E

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The named rock units Pycnosteus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pycnosteus and its relatives

Devonian

Where Pycnosteus and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

103 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Pycnosteus, 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

Each of the 15 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 Pycnosteus

Credit
Apokryltaros
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pycnosteus 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 itPsammosteidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Preobrajenski 1911