Parodon
genus of fishes
Parodon is a genus of freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Parodontidae, the scrapetooths. The fishes in this genus are from the tropical and subtropical Neotropics, their distribution extending as far south as the Río de la Plata.
Taxonomy
Parodon was first proposed as a genus in 1850 by the French zoologist Achille Valenciennes in volume 22 of his and Georges Cuvier's Histoire naturelle des poissons. Valenciennes proposed it as a monospecific genus with Parodon suborbitalis as its only species, this species being the type species by monotypy. P. suborbitale was first formally described, as Parodon suborbitale, by Valenciennes in the same volume as he proposed the genus and its type locality was given as Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Parodon is the type genus of the family Parodontidae, the scrapetooths, which is classified within the suborder Characoidei of the order Characiformes.
Etymology
Parodon is a combination of par, which means "even", and odon, which is a Latinised derivative of the Greek oudos, meaning "teeth". This is a reference to the cusps of the teeth of the type species all being even.
Species
Parodon contains the following valid species:
Parodon alfonsoi Londoño-Burbano, Román-Valencia & Taphorn, 2011
Parodon apolinari G. S. Myers, 1930
Parodon atratoensis Londoño-Burbano, Román-Valencia & Taphorn, 2011
Parodon bifasciatus C. H. Eigenmann, 1912
Parodon buckleyi Boulenger, 1887
Parodon caliensis Boulenger, 1895
Parodon carrikeri Fowler, 1940
Parodon guyanensis Géry, 1959
Parodon hilarii J. T. Reinhardt, 1867
Parodon magdalenensis Londoño-Burbano, Román-Valencia & Taphorn, 2011
Parodon moreirai Ingenito & Buckup, 2005
Parodon nasus Kner, 1859
Parodon orinocensis (Bonilla, Machado-Allison, Silvera, Chernoff, López & Lasso, 1999)
Parodon pongoensis (W. R. Allen, 1942) (Pongo characin)
Parodon suborbitalis Valenciennes, 1850
Characteristics
Parodon scrapetooths are distinguished from other scrapetooths by the possession of small lateral teeth on the sides of their lower jaws; these are absent in the two other genera of scrapetooth, Apareiodon and Saccodon. Within the genus the spoecies were thought to be distinguishable by the shape of the teeth but the teeth of these fishes are small and weak, so are easily broken or missed.
“Parodon” enters the record as genus of fishes. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Parodon, genus and fishes can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Parodon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Parodon, genus and fishes provides the most credible route into that argument.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7139379. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1850, 2011, 1930 and 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Parodon” 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.