Diplacanthidae

Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com ) · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- DiplacanthiformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Acanthodii
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Acanthodii
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Acanthodii
Time the record covers
At least 21 million years on record.
The record covers at least 393.47 Mya to 372.15 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 410.62 Mya to 358.86 Mya.
37 occurrences of Diplacanthidae 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
37 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
11 formations
- Lybster Flagstone Formation · Caithness Flagstone Group12
- Burtnieki Formation3
- Polotsk Formation3
- Escuminac Formation2
- Aruküla Formation2
- Witpoort Formation · Witteberg Group2
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The named rock units Diplacanthidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Diplacanthidae and its relatives
DevonianWhere Diplacanthidae and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
273 taxa- Diplacanthus12 sites
- Glyptolepis8 sites
- Cheiracanthus7 sites
- Cheiracanthus brevicostatus6 sites
- Cheirolepis trailli6 sites
- Coccosteus cuspidatus6 sites
- Diplacanthus crassisimus6 sites
- Actinopterygii5 sites
- Asterolepis5 sites
- Cheiracanthus latus5 sites
- Cheiracanthus murchisoni5 sites
- Cheirolepis5 sites
- Chondrichthyes5 sites
- Nostolepis gaujensis5 sites
- Osteolepis macrolepidotus5 sites
- Pterichthyodes milleri5 sites
- Sarcopterygii5 sites
- Acanthodes4 sites
- Diplacanthus striatus4 sites
- Diplacanthus tenuistriatus4 sites
- Dipterus valenciennesi4 sites
- Glyptolepis leptopterus4 sites
- Gyroptychius4 sites
- Holoptychiidae4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Diplacanthidae, 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
14 references- Fossil Fishes of Great Britain8
- The Middle Devonian fishes of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia) and Belarus5
- The diplacanthid fishes (Acanthodii, Diplacanthiformes, Diplacanthidae) from the Middle Devonian of Scotland4
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates3
- Early Frasnian acanthodians from central Iran3
- A new species of the Devonian actinopterygian fish Moythomasia from Belarus2
- A new species of ray-finned fish (Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii) from the upper Emsian and lowermost Eifelian deposits of Belarus2
- New Early Devonian (late Emsian) placoderms from Belarus2
- High latitude Gondwanan Famennian biodiversity patterns - evidence from the South African Witpoort Formation (Cape Supergroup, Witteberg Group)2
- Comparison of the Escuminac Formation ichthyofauna with other late Givetian/early Frasnian ichthyofaunas2
- New insights into Late Devonian vertebrates and associated fauna from the Cuche Formation (Floresta Massif, Colombia)1
- Palaeozoogeographical connections of the Devonian vertebrate communities of the Baltica Province. Part I. Eifelian–Givetian1
Each of the 37 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. 2 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 Diplacanthidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com )
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Diplacanthidae 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDiplacanthiformes through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Woodward 1891