Acanthodii

Searched as Acanthodii indet.. The Paleobiology Database treats Acanthodii as the accepted name.

Acanthodii or acanthodians is an extinct class of gnathostomes. They are currently considered to represent a paraphyletic grade of various fish lineages basal to extant Chondrichthyes, which includes living sharks, rays, and chimaeras. Acanthodians possess a mosaic of features shared with both osteichthyans and chondrichthyans. In general body shape, they were similar to modern sharks, but their epidermis was covered with tiny rhomboid platelets like the scales of holosteians.

Acanthodii

Danielle Dufault · CC BY 2.5 · 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
Also called
spiny fishPBDB
Sits inside
GnathostomataPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
nektonicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB

Time the record covers

At least 162 million years on record.

The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 259.857 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 432.9 Mya to 251.902 Mya.

Silurian — about 25 of 67 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 38 of 67 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 3 of 67 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 1 of 67 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 67 occurrences437–430 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences430–424 Mya — about 3 occurrences424–418 Mya — about 25 occurrences418–411 Mya — about 6 occurrences411–405 Mya — about 3 occurrences405–399 Mya — about 3 occurrences399–393 Mya — about 8 occurrences393–386 Mya — about 3 occurrences386–380 Mya — about 6 occurrences380–374 Mya — about 3 occurrences374–367 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences367–361 Mya — about 1 occurrence361–355 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences355–349 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences349–342 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences342–336 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences336–330 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences317–311 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences311–305 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences261–255 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences255–248 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences422.7 Mya259.857 Mya437 Mya248 Mya

67 occurrences of Acanthodii on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

67 occurrences

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

40 formations

Ludlow Bone Bed — 51.96°N, 3.74°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.00°N, 2.52°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.03°N, 2.63°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.54°N, 2.62°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.47°N, 2.73°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.27°N, 2.38°WLudlow Bone Bed — 52.43°N, 3.01°WLepel — 53.07°N, 28.70°ELepel — 53.32°N, 30.37°ELepel — 55.41°N, 27.19°ESomerset Island — 73.98°N, 95.28°WSomerset Island — 74.13°N, 94.15°WGydo — 33.30°S, 21.83°EGydo — 32.64°S, 19.41°EPeel Sound — 73.25°N, 93.50°WPeel Sound — 72.23°N, 96.55°WTop Ornatella Bone Bed — 51.68°N, 2.96°WTop Ornatella Bone Bed — 51.95°N, 2.50°WWhitcliffe — 52.37°N, 2.73°WWhitcliffe — 51.58°N, 1.87°WCatavi — 18.45°S, 64.80°WLedbury — 51.95°N, 2.88°WGamka — 32.63°S, 19.40°ESt. Louis — 41.32°N, 92.33°WMcColley Canyon — 39.88°N, 116.07°WOld Red Sandstone — 51.86°N, 2.73°WEvieux — 50.45°N, 5.06°EBoggy — 34.43°N, 96.96°WTordalen — 78.67°N, 16.22°EBahram — 30.76°N, 57.03°ELost Burro — 36.30°N, 116.96°WGneudna — 24.06°S, 115.21°EVirgin Hills — 17.91°S, 125.90°EDelorme — 62.55°N, 127.75°WWahnbach — 50.94°N, 7.29°EFreshwater West — 52.49°N, 2.52°WMelby — 60.32°N, 1.68°W

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The named rock units Acanthodii has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Acanthodii and its relatives

Devonian

Where Acanthodii and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

1,949 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 323 sites for Acanthodii, and this reads 240 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

35 references

Each of the 67 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. 23 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 content1

Picture of Acanthodii

Credit
Danielle Dufault
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Acanthodii was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

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 itGnathostomata through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Owen 1846)