Ctenodonta
Searched as Ctenodonta cf. subcontracta. The Paleobiology Database treats Ctenodonta as the accepted name.

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- CtenodontidaePBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB
- Motility
- facultatively mobile, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 410.62 Mya and 399.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Ctenodonta 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
2 occurrences- Devonian100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Ctenodonta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ctenodonta and its relatives
DevonianWhere Ctenodonta and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
2,538 taxa- Modiolopsis57 sites
- Nuculites50 sites
- Cyrtodonta46 sites
- Rafinesquina44 sites
- Orthodesma40 sites
- Pterinea39 sites
- Conularia36 sites
- Lingula32 sites
- Cymatonota31 sites
- Vanuxemia31 sites
- Crinoidea30 sites
- Cyrtodontula30 sites
- Hormotoma gracilis30 sites
- Platystrophia30 sites
- Strophomena29 sites
- Orthoceras28 sites
- Sinuites cancellatus28 sites
- Hallopora27 sites
- Isotelus27 sites
- Palaeoneilo27 sites
- Sowerbyella27 sites
- Lophospira perangulata26 sites
- Modiolodon26 sites
- Prasopora26 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 343 sites for Ctenodonta, 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
2 referencesEach of the 2 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Ctenodonta
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ctenodonta was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCtenodontidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Salter 1852