Stomias affinis
Stomias affinis, also known as Gunther's boafish, is a deep-sea mesopelagic fish species in the family Stomiidae. They inhabit the open seas in the equatorial zones of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Uncredited · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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
- StomiasPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Stomiiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Stomiiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Stomiiformes
Time the record covers
At most 6.3 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Stomias affinis on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Stomias affinis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Stomias affinis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Stomias affinis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
12 taxa- Bolinichthys1 site
- Caulerpites1 site
- Chauliodus eximius1 site
- Julescraneia grandicornis1 site
- Lampanyctus1 site
- Myctophum1 site
- Paleocystophora acuminata1 site
- Paleocystophora plumosa1 site
- Paleohalidrys linguliformis1 site
- Pelagornis orri1 site
- Puffinus (Puffinus) diatomicus1 site
- Sula willetti1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Stomias affinis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2

Picture of Stomias affinis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Stomias affinis · UF:Fish:178096
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 itStomias through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Guunther 1887