Eodiaphyodus
Searched as Eodiaphyodus lerichei. The Paleobiology Database treats Eodiaphyodus as the accepted name.
Eodiaphyodus is an extinct genus of marine phyllodont ray-finned fish known from Late Cretaceous sediments across Africa. As with other members of its family, it is primarily known by its fossilized tooth plates, which were likely found in the back of its throat and used to crush its food.

Harold9595959 · 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
- AnguilliformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Anguilliformes
- Life habit
- nektobenthicPBDB, for Anguilliformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Anguilliformes
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 72.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Eodiaphyodus 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
1 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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.
Eodiaphyodus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Eodiaphyodus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1 taxon- Squalicorax pristodontus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Eodiaphyodus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 referenceEach 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 content1
Picture of Eodiaphyodus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Harold9595959
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Eodiaphyodus was found in Sketchfab.
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 itAnguilliformes through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.