Dorateuthis
genus of molluscs (fossil)
Dorateuthis is a genus of cephalopod from the Upper Santonian shale of Late Cretaceous Lebanon. Though traditionally regarded as a plesioteuthidid squid, it may instead be a member of the suborder Prototeuthina, the earliest-diverging branch of Octopoda. Dorateuthis was small, with a mantle length of 5–40 cm (2.0–15.7 in). The contents of its digestive system suggest that it may have fed on small fishes and been an active predator.
Taxonomy
Early history
The holotype of Dorateuthis, a near-complete specimen (BMNH C5017) was discovered in the Sahel Alma fossil site, near Beirut, Lebanon, then part of Syria. It entered the collection of Reverend Edwin R. Lewis, a professor in the American University of Beirut (then the Syrian Protestant College), where it subsequently came to the attention of British geologist Robert Damon. Damon brought the fossil to a fellow geologist, Henry Woodward, who was at the time writing about fossil crustaceans recovered from Sahel Alma. In 1883, Woodward described the specimen, assigning it to a new genus and species, Dorateuthis syriaca. The generic name derives from the Greek δόρυ ("spear") and τευθίς ("squid"), while the species name refers to Syria.
Other species
Several other taxa have been assigned or reassigned to Dorateuthis since its description.
“Dorateuthis” enters the record as genus of molluscs (fossil). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dorateuthis, genus and molluscs can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Dorateuthis” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dorateuthis, genus and molluscs provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5297536. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1883.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dorateuthis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.