Falcatidae

Falcatidae is a family of Paleozoic cartilaginous fish belonging to the order Symmoriiformes. Members of this family include Falcatus, a small fish from the Bear Gulch Limestone of Montana. The family first appeared around the start of the Carboniferous, and there is some evidence that they survived well into the early Cretaceous, though its putative Cretaceous members were also argued to be more likely neoselachians.

Falcatidae

Tommy from Arad · CC BY 2.0 · 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
SymmoriiformesPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Symmoriiformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Symmoriiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Symmoriiformes

Time the record covers

At least 202 million years on record.

The record covers at least 339.9 Mya to 137.05 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 358.86 Mya to 132.6 Mya.

Devonian — about 0 of 25 occurrencesCarboniferous — about 20 of 25 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 2 of 25 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 3 of 25 occurrences363–356 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences356–348 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences348–340 Mya — about 1 occurrence340–332 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences332–324 Mya — about 13 occurrences324–316 Mya — about 2 occurrences316–308 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences308–301 Mya — about 2 occurrences301–293 Mya — about 2 occurrences277–269 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences269–261 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences144–136 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences136–128 Mya — about 2 occurrences339.9 Mya137.05 Mya363 Mya128 Mya

25 occurrences of Falcatidae on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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

25 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

9 formations

Heath — 46.95°N, 108.96°WHeath — 46.96°N, 108.89°WHeath — 46.97°N, 109.04°WFayetteville — 35.84°N, 92.57°WFayetteville — 35.87°N, 93.96°WLimestone Coal — 55.92°N, 4.33°WSteinmühl — 47.91°N, 14.35°EMarbre Noir — 50.32°N, 4.75°EJingyuan — 36.56°N, 104.68°EOnaga — 40.48°N, 95.73°WFoldedal — 80.62°N, 15.50°WCutoff / Brushy Canyon — 31.83°N, 104.86°W

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The named rock units Falcatidae 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.

Falcatidae and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Falcatidae and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

218 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Falcatidae, 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

16 references

Each of the 25 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. 4 further references are not listed. 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 Falcatidae

Credit
Tommy from Arad
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Falcatidae 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 itSymmoriiformes through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Zangerl 1990