Morone

For people named Morone, see Morone (surname).

Morone Temporal range: Eocene to present [1] PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
White bass (M. chrysops)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Acanthuriformes
Family:	Moronidae
Genus:	Morone Mitchill, 1814
Type species
Morone rufa Mitchill, 1814
Synonyms
ChrysopercaFowler, 1907 LepibemaRafinesque, 1820 RoccusMitchill, 1814

Morone is a genus of temperate basses native to the Atlantic coast of North America and the freshwater systems of the midwestern and eastern United States. Fossil evidence also suggests they inhabited Europe during the Paleogene and Neogene. ^[2]

Etymology

The word morone is an archaic variation of "maroon". ^[3] American politician-naturalist Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831) first coined the genus in 1814, describing all four species of "perch of New York" he included under the genus (only two of which still remain classified under the genus today) as having "ruddy", "scarlet", or "reddish, rusty and ochreous" fins. ^[4] Species of Dicentrarchus were formerly placed in this genus, but can be distinguished by the presence of preopercular spines in Dicentrarchus. ^[5]

Species

The currently recognized species in this genus are: ^[6]

Image	Scientific name	Common Name	Distribution
	Morone americana (J. F. Gmelin, 1789)	white perch	fresh water and coastal areas from the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario south to the Pee Dee River in South Carolina, and as far east as Nova Scotia, lower Great Lakes, Finger Lakes, Long Island Sound and nearby coastal areas, Hudson and Mohawk River system, Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay.
	Morone chrysops (Rafinesque, 1820)	white bass	widely across the United States
	Morone mississippiensis D. S. Jordan & C. H. Eigenmann, 1887	yellow bass	Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana and may also be found in the Trinity River and the Tennessee River.
	Morone saxatilis (Walbaum, 1792)	striped bass	Atlantic coastline of North America from the St. Lawrence River into the Gulf of Mexico to approximately Louisiana.

Fossil specimen of Morone sp. from Germany

The following fossil species are also known from Europe: ^[7]

• † Morone aequalis (Koken, 1891) - Miocene of Germany (=Morone alsheimensis(Meyer, 1859))
• † Morone delheidi (Storms, 1893) - Oligocene of Belgium
• † Morone major (Agassiz, 1844) - Eocene of France
• † Morone shizurus (Agassiz, 1844) - Eocene of Italy
• ?† Morone ubinoi (Fischer von Waldenheim, 1850) - Cenozoic of Greece ( nomen dubium ) ^[8]

The fossil species † Morone ionkoi Bannikov, 1993 may be potentially more closely related to Dicentrarchus . Many other fossil Morone species from the former Yugoslavian region likely do not belong to the Moronidae at all. ^[7]

References

1. Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera". Bulletins of American Paleontology. 364: 560. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
2. Grădianu, Ionuț; Bordeianu, Marian; Codrea, Vlad (2023-01-02). "†Dicentrarchus oligocenicus, sp. nov. (Perciformes, Moronidae): the first record of an Oligocene Sea Bass skeleton from Romania, with a revision of †Morone major (Agassiz) from Piatra-Neamţ (Eastern Carpathians)". Historical Biology. 35 (1): 92–101. doi:10.1080/08912963.2021.2022136. ISSN   0891-2963.
3. Stormonth, James (1879). Phelp, Philip Henry (ed.). Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (5 ed.). William Blackwood and sons. p. 371.
4. Scharpf, Christopher (2016-04-20). "The mystery of Morone: Solved at last?". The ETYFish Project. Retrieved 2023-09-17.
5. Grădianu, Ionuț; Bordeianu, Marian; Codrea, Vlad (2023-01-02). "†Dicentrarchus oligocenicus, sp. nov. (Perciformes, Moronidae): the first record of an Oligocene Sea Bass skeleton from Romania, with a revision of †Morone major (Agassiz) from Piatra-Neamţ (Eastern Carpathians)". Historical Biology. 35 (1): 92–101. doi:10.1080/08912963.2021.2022136. ISSN   0891-2963.
6. Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.). "Species in genus Morone". FishBase . December 2013 version.
7. Grădianu, Ionuț; Bordeianu, Marian; Codrea, Vlad (2023-01-02). "†Dicentrarchus oligocenicus, sp. nov. (Perciformes, Moronidae): the first record of an Oligocene Sea Bass skeleton from Romania, with a revision of †Morone major (Agassiz) from Piatra-Neamţ (Eastern Carpathians)". Historical Biology. 35 (1): 92–101. doi:10.1080/08912963.2021.2022136. ISSN   0891-2963.
8. Argyriou, Thodoris (2022), Vlachos, Evangelos (ed.), "The Fossil Record of Ray-Finned Fishes (Actinopterygii) in Greece", Fossil Vertebrates of Greece Vol. 1: Basal vertebrates, Amphibians, Reptiles, Afrotherians, Glires, and Primates, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 91–142, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-68398-6_4, ISBN   978-3-030-68398-6 , retrieved 2025-08-30