Rolfodon
Rolfodon is an extinct genus of shark in the family Chlamydoselachidae. It is closely related to the extant frilled sharks in the genus Chlamydoselachus, which it can be differentiated from by tooth morphology. It is named after late Canadian paleontologist Rolf Ludvigsen.

Feichtinger I, Beaury B, Guinot G, Harzhauser M, Nichterl T, Stoykova K, Pollerspöck J · CC0 · via Wikipedia/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
- ChlamydoselachidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Hexanchiformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Hexanchiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Hexanchiformes
Time the record covers
At least 58 million years on record.
The record covers at least 72.2 Mya to 13.82 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 83.6 Mya to 7.246 Mya.
17 occurrences of Rolfodon on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
17 occurrences- Late Cretaceous41%
- Paleocene41%
- Miocene18%
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
10 formations
- Northumberland Formation · Nanaimo Group3
- Waipara Greensand Formation2
- Takatika Grit Formation · Tioriori Group2
- Nierental Formation · Gosau Group2
- Santa Marta Formation2
- Angostura Formation1
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The named rock units Rolfodon 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.
Rolfodon and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Rolfodon and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
76 taxa- Lamniformes6 sites
- Carcharias4 sites
- Squaliformes4 sites
- Centrophorus3 sites
- Chlamydoselachidae3 sites
- Elasmobranchii3 sites
- Paraorthacodus3 sites
- Carcharhiniformes2 sites
- Carcharias dominguei2 sites
- Centroscymnus2 sites
- Centrosqualus mustardi2 sites
- Chlamydoselachus balli2 sites
- Dykeius garethi2 sites
- Echinorhinus2 sites
- Eoetmopterus supracretaceus2 sites
- Florenceodon johnyi2 sites
- Hessinodon wardi2 sites
- Hexanchus microdon2 sites
- Komoksodon kwutchakuth2 sites
- Mitsukurinidae2 sites
- Notidanodon2 sites
- Notidanodon dentatus2 sites
- Notidanodon pectinatus2 sites
- Odontaspis winkleri2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Rolfodon, 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
12 references- A shark fauna from the Campanian of Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada: an insight into the diversity of Cretaceous deep-water assemblages3
- Elasmobranch assemblages from a bathyal environment spanning the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in Austria2
- An early Cenozoic neoselachian shark fauna from the South Pacific2
- Tooth remains of chlamydoselachian sharks from Japan and their phylogeny and paleoecology2
- Revealing elasmobranch diversity across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in the Central Tethys (Byala, Bulgaria)1
- Earliest Danian outer neritic elasmobranch assemblages reveal an environmentally controlled faunal turnover at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary in the northern Tethyan Realm (Austria)1
- Chatham Island Paleocene fossils provide insight into the palaeobiology, evolution, and diversity of early penguins (Aves, Sphenisciformes)1
- Fossil Chondrichthyes from the central eastern Pacific Ocean and their paleoceanographic significance1
- A rare Danian (early Paleocene) Chlamydoselachus (Chondrichthyes: Elasmobranchii) from the Takatika Grit, Chatham Islands, New Zealand1
- Late Cretaceous Antarctic fish diversity1
- Sélaciens du Crétacé (Albien-Maastrichtien) d'Angola1
- Fish remains from the Santa Marta Formation (Late Cretaceous) of James Ross Island, Antarctica1
Each of the 17 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 content1
Picture of Rolfodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Feichtinger I, Beaury B, Guinot G, Harzhauser M, Nichterl T, Stoykova K, Pollerspöck J
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rolfodon”
- 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 itChlamydoselachidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cappetta et al. 2019