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.
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 "", "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.
The currently recognized species in this genus are:
The following fossil species are also known from Europe:
The fossil species â Morone ionkoi <small>Bannikov, 1993</small> 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.