Dipteridae
Dipteridae is an extinct family of prehistoric lungfishes which lived in the Devonian period.

User:Haplochromis · CC BY-SA 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
- DipteriformesPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- lagoonal,marine,brackish,freshwaterPBDB, for Dipnoi
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 387.95 Mya to 365.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 393.47 Mya to 358.86 Mya.
55 occurrences of Dipteridae 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
55 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
31 formations
- Oberer Plattenkalk Formation5
- Turgenevo Formation5
- Lybster Flagstone Formation · Caithness Flagstone Group4
- Aruküla Formation3
- Bindaree Formation · Wellington Volcanic Group2
- Gauja Formation2
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The named rock units Dipteridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dipteridae and its relatives
DevonianWhere Dipteridae and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
303 taxa- Dipterus14 sites
- Glyptolepis13 sites
- Dipterus valenciennesi10 sites
- Coccosteus cuspidatus8 sites
- Acanthodii7 sites
- Cheirolepis7 sites
- Homosteus milleri7 sites
- Actinolepis tuberculata5 sites
- Asterolepis estonica5 sites
- Byssacanthus dilatatus5 sites
- Gyroptychius5 sites
- Homostius latus5 sites
- Onychodus5 sites
- Osteolepididae5 sites
- Pterichthyodes milleri5 sites
- Acanthodes4 sites
- Cephalaspidida4 sites
- Cheiracanthus4 sites
- Cheiracanthus murchisoni4 sites
- Cheirolepis trailli4 sites
- Dickosteus threiplandi4 sites
- Diplacanthus crassisimus4 sites
- Holoptychius4 sites
- Moythomasia4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 45 sites for Dipteridae, 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
21 references- Mid Devonian fossil fishes sites of Scotland9
- The Middle Devonian fishes of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia) and Belarus7
- Fossil Fishes of Great Britain6
- Dipnoans from the Upper Devonian Locality Rybnitsa in Oryol Region5
- New Finds of Acanthodians, Arthrodires, Crossopterygians, Ganoids and Dipnoans in the Upper Middle Devonian Calcareous Flags (Oberer Plattenkalk) of the Bergisch Gladbach-Paffrath Trough5
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates4
- New finds of fishes in the lower uppermost Famennian (Upper Devonian) of Сentral Russia and habitats of the Khovanshchinian vertebrate assemblages3
- Preliminary report on Late Devonian fishes from central and eastern Iran2
- Upper Devonian fish from Colorado2
- Unique dental arrangement in a new species, Groenlandaspis howittensis (Placodermi, Arthrodira) from the Middle Devonian of Mount Howitt, Victoria, Australia.1
- New tetrapodomorph vertebrates from the Yam-Tesovo locality (Amata Regional Stage, Middle–Upper Devonian) of Leningrad Region, northwestern Russia1
- A new species of long‐snouted lungfish from the Late Devonian of Australia, and its functional and biogeographical implications1
Each of the 55 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. 9 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 Dipteridae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dipteridae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dipteridae”
- 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 itDipteriformes through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1846