Asterolepis

Asterolepis is an extinct genus of antiarch placoderms from the Devonian of North and South America and Europe. They were heavily armored flat-headed benthic detritivores with distinctive jointed limb-like pectoral fins and hollow spine. The armor plate gives the Asterolepis a box-like shape. Its pectoral fins are also armored but the caudal and dorsal fin are not. The first fossils were named by M. Eichwald in 1840 after noticing star-like markings on the fossils.

Asterolepis

ДиБгд · CC BY-SA 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
AsterolepididaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Placodermi
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Placodermi
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Placodermi

Time the record covers

At least 187 million years on record.

The record covers at least 393.47 Mya to 205.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 410.62 Mya to 201.4 Mya.

Devonian — about 47 of 49 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 1 of 49 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 49 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 49 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 49 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 1 of 49 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 49 occurrences415–408 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences408–400 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences400–393 Mya — about 2 occurrences393–386 Mya — about 22 occurrences386–379 Mya — about 17 occurrences379–371 Mya — about 4 occurrences371–364 Mya — about 1 occurrence364–357 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences357–350 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences350–342 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences342–335 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences335–328 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences328–321 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences212–204 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences204–197 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences393.47 Mya205.7 Mya415 Mya197 Mya

49 occurrences of Asterolepis 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

49 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

23 formations

Rousay — 59.04°N, 2.87°WRousay — 59.07°N, 2.80°WRousay — 58.89°N, 2.82°WRousay — 58.78°N, 2.93°WRousay — 59.25°N, 2.87°WRousay — 59.25°N, 2.88°WRousay — 59.19°N, 2.70°WBurtnieki — 58.10°N, 25.55°ENarva — 57.55°N, 25.29°EBlue Fiord — 76.30°N, 99.30°WAruküla — 59.37°N, 25.08°EAruküla — 57.55°N, 25.28°EExter — 48.55°N, 9.07°ECuche — 6.58°N, 75.67°WGauja — 58.01°N, 25.38°ENarva — 59.38°N, 28.19°EGorodok — 55.46°N, 29.98°EPolotsk — 51.88°N, 26.85°EOld Red Sandstone — 51.50°N, 2.78°WLode — 57.20°N, 25.25°EFram — 77.17°N, 86.27°WKatsberg — 41.86°N, 74.76°WNathorst Fjord — 71.63°N, 22.33°WTordalen — 78.67°N, 16.22°EWutung — 32.48°N, 119.04°EPļaviņas — 59.89°N, 32.80°ERed Hill Beds — 40.05°N, 116.04°WRødebjerg and Sofia Sund — 73.66°N, 23.85°WYam-Tesovo — 58.89°N, 30.56°E

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The named rock units Asterolepis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Asterolepis and its relatives

Devonian

Where Asterolepis and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

319 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 43 sites for Asterolepis, 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

23 references

Each of the 49 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. 11 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 Asterolepis

Credit
ДиБгд
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Asterolepis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

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

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 itAsterolepididae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Eichwald 1840