Pygopterus

Pygopterus is an extinct genus of prehistoric bony fish that lived during the Wuchiapingian to Olenekian ages in what is now England, Germany, Greenland and Svalbard (Spitsbergen). It is one of the few genera of ray-finned fish known to cross the Permian-Triassic boundary.

Pygopterus

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
PygopteridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Palaeonisciformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Palaeonisciformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Palaeonisciformes

Time the record covers

At least 111 million years on record.

The record covers at least 316.9 Mya to 205.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 318.7 Mya to 201.4 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 1 of 36 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 26 of 36 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 5 of 36 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 36 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 4 of 36 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 36 occurrences321–317 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences317–313 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences280–276 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences276–272 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences272–268 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences268–264 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences264–260 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences260–256 Mya — about 16 occurrences256–252 Mya — about 8 occurrences252–248 Mya — about 5 occurrences207–203 Mya — about 2 occurrences203–199 Mya — about 2 occurrences316.9 Mya205.7 Mya321 Mya199 Mya

36 occurrences of Pygopterus on record, most of them in the Permian. 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

36 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

8 formations

Raisby — 55.05°N, 1.44°WRaisby — 54.63°N, 1.63°WRaisby — 54.69°N, 1.52°WZechstein — 51.23°N, 8.89°EZechstein — 51.49°N, 6.55°EZechstein — 54.25°N, 7.67°EKupferschiefer — 52.23°N, 7.96°EKupferschiefer — 50.98°N, 10.01°EKongressfjellet — 78.24°N, 17.21°EKongressfjellet — 78.25°N, 17.84°EKongressfjellet — 78.28°N, 17.63°EKongressfjellet — 78.57°N, 15.32°ERavnefjeld — 74.02°N, 21.55°WRavnefjeld — 73.99°N, 21.42°WGomaniibrik — 37.31°N, 43.54°EVeine Lambiotte — 50.57°N, 4.72°EBaytugan — 56.01°N, 52.71°E

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The named rock units Pygopterus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pygopterus and its relatives

Permian

Where Pygopterus and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.

Found in the same rock

76 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Pygopterus, 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

11 references

Each of the 36 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 Pygopterus

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pygopterus 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 itPygopteridae through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1833