Osmeroides
Searched as Rhabdolepis. The Paleobiology Database treats Osmeroides as the accepted name.
Rhabdolepis is an extinct genus of prehistoric bony fish that lived during the Asselian age of the Cisuralian epoch in what is now Germany and France (Burgundy).

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- OsmeroididaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Elopiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Elopiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Elopiformes
Time the record covers
At least 237 million years on record.
The record covers at least 293.52 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 298.9 Mya to 48.07 Mya.
38 occurrences of Osmeroides on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
38 occurrences- Permian13%
- Early Cretaceous4%
- Late Cretaceous59%
- Eocene24%
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
11 formations
- Meisenheim Formation5
- London Clay Formation · Thames Group4
- Argile des Flandres Formation4
- Holleywell, New Pit, Lewes Formation · White Chalk Group3
- Ahlen Formation2
- Shaftesbury Formation1
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The named rock units Osmeroides has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Osmeroides and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Osmeroides and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
588 taxa- Aglyptorhynchus sulcatus3 sites
- Albula oweni3 sites
- Ampheristus toliapicus3 sites
- Carcharias hopei3 sites
- Cylindracanthus rectus3 sites
- Eutrichiurides winkleri3 sites
- Ichthyodectes ctenodon3 sites
- Palaeocybium proosti3 sites
- Phyllodus toliapicus3 sites
- Pycnodus3 sites
- Scombrinus nuchalis3 sites
- Trichiurides sagittidens3 sites
- Acipenser toliapicus2 sites
- Acrogaster heckeli2 sites
- Aglyptorhynchus venablesi2 sites
- Anomotodon sheppeyensis2 sites
- Argillichthys toombsi2 sites
- Beerichthys2 sites
- Berycopsis germanus2 sites
- Bramoides brieni2 sites
- Bucklandium diluvii2 sites
- Carcharias macrotus2 sites
- Centrosqualus primaevus2 sites
- Dasornis emuinus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Osmeroides, 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
22 references- The fossil fishes of the chalk of Mount Lebanon, in Syria6
- La faune ichthyologique de l'Ypresien de la Belgique5
- The English Chalk and London Clay: two remarkable British bony fish Lagerstatten4
- Revision of Rhabdolepis macropterus (Bronn, 1829) (Osteichthyes, lower Actinopterygii; Lower Permian, SW Germany)2
- Taxonomic remarks on Rhabdolepis saarbrueckensis Gardiner, 1963 (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) and its relationships to some actinopterygians from the Late Carboniferous of the Bohemian Massif, Czech Republic2
- Casier, 19662
- On a collection of upper Cretaceous fishes from Mount Lebanon, Syria, with descriptions of four new genera and nineteen new species2
- The Fossil Record of Ray-Finned Fishes (Actinopterygii) in Greece1
- Late Cretaceous environments and communities as recorded at Chrtníky (Bohemian Cretaceous Basin, Czech Republic)1
- Observations on the London Clay excavation at Aveley, Essex1
- Nouveaux teleostei du gisement du Turonien inférieur de Goulmima (Maroc)[New Teleostei from the Eraly Turonian locality of Goulmima (Morocco)]1
- A Late Cretaceous (Turonian) ichthyofauna from Lac des Bois, Northwest Territories, Canada, with paleobiogeographic comparisons with Turonian ichthyofaunas of the Western Interior Seaway1
Each of the 38 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. 10 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 Osmeroides
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James St. John
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Osmeroides 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rhabdolepis”
- 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 itOsmeroididae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. von der Marck 1863