Morone

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.

==Etymology== The word morone is an archaic variation of "maroon". 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. Species of Dicentrarchus were formerly placed in this genus, but can be distinguished by the presence of preopercular spines in Dicentrarchus.