Acanthodes
Acanthodes is an extinct genus of acanthodian fish. Species have been found in Europe, North America, and Asia, spanning the Early Carboniferous to the Early Permian, making it one of the youngest known acanthodian genera.

SeismicShrimp · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- AcanthodidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Acanthodii
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Acanthodii
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Acanthodii
Time the record covers
At least 105 million years on record.
The record covers at least 399.5 Mya to 293.52 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 410.62 Mya to 251.902 Mya.
81 occurrences of Acanthodes on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
81 occurrences- Devonian35%
- Carboniferous38%
- Permian27%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
33 formations
- Wild Cow Formation · Madera Group10
- Vrchlabi Formation7
- Gullane Formation · Strathclyde Group5
- Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation5
- Burtnieki Formation4
- Salairka Horizon Formation3
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Acanthodes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Acanthodes and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Acanthodes and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
624 taxa- Elonichthys10 sites
- Ctenacanthidae8 sites
- Sarcopterygii8 sites
- Actinopterygii7 sites
- Cheiracanthus7 sites
- Cheiracanthus brevicostatus7 sites
- Cheirolepis bychovensis7 sites
- Rhadinichthys7 sites
- Amblypterus rohani6 sites
- Cheiracanthus latus6 sites
- Diplostraca6 sites
- Dunbarella6 sites
- Elasmobranchii6 sites
- Elonichthys robisoni6 sites
- Gastropoda6 sites
- Glyptolepis6 sites
- Rhadinichthys carinatus6 sites
- Bairdiohealdites5 sites
- Cheiracanthoides comptus5 sites
- Coelacanthidae5 sites
- Coeloenellina5 sites
- Cosmoptychius striatus5 sites
- Geisina5 sites
- Gypidula5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 69 sites for Acanthodes, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
34 references- Research by the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové on significant localities with Permian faunas in the Bohemian Massif – Part I – Krkonoše Piedmont Basin, Rudník member8
- A new species of ray-finned fish (Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii) from the upper Emsian and lowermost Eifelian deposits of Belarus7
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates6
- Facies and faunal associations of the Telengitian (Emsian) in its type locality5
- Recent discoveries of Carboniferous fishes in Edinburgh5
- Fish Remains from the North Wales Coalfield5
- Late Pennsylvanian Chondrichthyes, Acanthodii, and deep-bodied Actinopterygii from the Kinney Quarry, Manzanita Mountains, New Mexico4
- A new species of the Devonian actinopterygian fish Moythomasia from Belarus3
- New finds of fishes in the lower uppermost Famennian (Upper Devonian) of Сentral Russia and habitats of the Khovanshchinian vertebrate assemblages3
- Revision der unterpermischen Acanthodier (Acanthodii: Pisces) des sudwestdeutchen Saar-Nahe-Beckens3
- Vertebrate correlation of the Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous on the East European Platform3
- Faunal distribution, seasonal deposition, and fish taphonomy at the Upper Pennsylvanian (Missourian) Kinney Brick Company Quarry, central New Mexico3
Each of the 81 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 22 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Acanthodes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- SeismicShrimp
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Acanthodes sp. · MNHN:F:SAA24a
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Acanthodes”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAcanthodidae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1833