Plectrodus

Agassiz in Murchison, 1839 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- GnathostomataPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Time the record covers
At most 9.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 422.7 Mya and 413.02 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Plectrodus on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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 occurrencesThese 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 Plectrodus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Plectrodus and its relatives
SilurianWhere Plectrodus and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
33 taxa- Acanthodii1 site
- Althaspis leachi1 site
- Apalolepis toombsi1 site
- Auchenaspis salteri1 site
- Benneviaspis salopiensis1 site
- Climatiiformes1 site
- Dolichopterus1 site
- Erettopterus1 site
- Erettopterus spatulatus1 site
- Europrotaspis crenulata1 site
- Eurypterus cephalaspis1 site
- Heightingtonaspis anglica1 site
- Heightingtonaspis willsi1 site
- Hemicyclaspis lightbodii1 site
- Hemicyclaspis murchisoni1 site
- Hughmilleria1 site
- Kiaeraspis1 site
- Lingulidae1 site
- Loganellia1 site
- Mixopterus1 site
- Nanahughmilleria1 site
- Nodonchus bambusifer1 site
- Onchus besomensis1 site
- Onchus murchisoni1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Plectrodus, 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
2 references- Late Silurian fossil fishes sites of the Welsh Borders1
- Chapter 4. Early Devonian fossil fishes sites of the Welsh Borders1
Each 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 Plectrodus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Agassiz in Murchison, 1839
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Plectrodus 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 itGnathostomata through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz in Murchison 1839