Ceratodus

Searched as Ceratodus multicristatus lipovensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Ceratodus as the accepted name.

Ceratodus is an extinct genus of freshwater lungfish that was found worldwide during the Mesozoic Era. It has been described as a "catch all", and a "form genus" used to refer to the remains, typically toothplates, of a variety of lungfish belonging to the extinct family Ceratodontidae. Fossil evidence dates back to the Early Triassic. A wide range of fossil species from different time periods have been found around the world in places such as the United States, Argentina, Greenland, England, Germany, Egypt, Madagascar, China, and Australia. Ceratodus is believed to have become extinct sometime around the beginning of the Eocene Epoch.

Ceratodus

Heinrich Harder (1858-1935) · Public Domain · 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
CeratodontidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
lagoonal,marine,brackish,freshwaterPBDB, for Dipnoi

Time the record covers

At most 3.8 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 250.8 Mya and 247 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Early Triassic — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEarly TriassicMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 1 occurrence251–251 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251–251 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences250–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences249–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–248 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences248–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251.3 Mya246.5 Mya

1 occurrence of Ceratodus on record, most of them in the Early Triassic. 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

1 occurrences

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

1 formation

Lipovskaya — 49.26°N, 43.67°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Ceratodus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Ceratodus and its relatives

Early Triassic

Where Ceratodus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.

Found in the same rock

1,131 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 145 sites for Ceratodus, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Ceratodus

Credit
Heinrich Harder (1858-1935)
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

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 itCeratodontidae through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1838