Dipterus

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
- DipteridaePBDB
- 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.
34 occurrences of Dipterus 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
34 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
19 formations
- Oberer Plattenkalk Formation4
- Lybster Flagstone Formation · Caithness Flagstone Group4
- Turgenevo Formation3
- Narva Formation2
- Aruküla Formation2
- Spital Flagstone Formation · Caithness Flagstone Group2
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The named rock units Dipterus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dipterus and its relatives
DevonianWhere Dipterus and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
173 taxa- Glyptolepis9 sites
- Coccosteus cuspidatus8 sites
- Homosteus milleri7 sites
- Acanthodii6 sites
- Actinolepis tuberculata5 sites
- Asterolepis estonica5 sites
- Byssacanthus dilatatus5 sites
- Cheirolepis5 sites
- Gyroptychius5 sites
- Homostius latus5 sites
- Pterichthyodes milleri5 sites
- Cephalaspidida4 sites
- Cheiracanthus murchisoni4 sites
- Cheirolepis trailli4 sites
- Dickosteus threiplandi4 sites
- Diplacanthus crassisimus4 sites
- Onychodus4 sites
- Osteolepididae4 sites
- Osteolepis macrolepidotus4 sites
- Cheiracanthus3 sites
- Diplacanthus striatus3 sites
- Glyptolepis leptopterus3 sites
- Holonema3 sites
- Mesacanthus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Dipterus, 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
11 references- Mid Devonian fossil fishes sites of Scotland9
- Fossil Fishes of Great Britain6
- The Middle Devonian fishes of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia) and Belarus5
- New Finds of Acanthodians, Arthrodires, Crossopterygians, Ganoids and Dipnoans in the Upper Middle Devonian Calcareous Flags (Oberer Plattenkalk) of the Bergisch Gladbach-Paffrath Trough4
- Dipnoans from the Upper Devonian Locality Rybnitsa in Oryol Region3
- Upper Devonian fish from Colorado2
- New tetrapodomorph vertebrates from the Yam-Tesovo locality (Amata Regional Stage, Middle–Upper Devonian) of Leningrad Region, northwestern Russia1
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates1
- Preliminary report on Late Devonian fishes from central and eastern Iran1
- Vegetaux du Devonien Superieur de la Belgique1
- The Paleozoic fishes of North America1
Each of the 34 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. 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 content3

Picture of Dipterus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Dipterus valenciennesi · BGS:GSM:53389
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- UIPaleoRepository
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itDipteridae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sedgwick and Murchison 1828