Holonema
Holonema is an extinct genus of relatively large, barrel-shaped arthrodire placoderms that were found in oceans throughout the world from the Mid to Late Devonian, when the last species perished in the Frasnian-Fammian extinction event. Most species of the genus are known from fragments of their armor, but the Gogo Reef species, H. westolli, is known from whole, articulated specimens.

Mr Fink ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- HolonematidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Arthrodira
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Arthrodira
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthrodira
Time the record covers
At least 21 million years on record.
The record covers at least 393.47 Mya to 372.15 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 399.5 Mya to 358.86 Mya.
24 occurrences of Holonema on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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
24 occurrences- Devonian100%
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
16 formations
- Chemung Formation2
- Narva Formation2
- Aruküla Formation2
- Rockport Quarry Limestone Formation2
- Catskill Formation1
- Aruküla Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Holonema 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.
Holonema and its relatives
DevonianWhere Holonema and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
182 taxa- Glyptolepis8 sites
- Onychodus7 sites
- Bothriolepis5 sites
- Byssacanthus dilatatus5 sites
- Homostius latus5 sites
- Orvikuina5 sites
- Actinolepis tuberculata4 sites
- Asterolepis estonica4 sites
- Cheirolepis4 sites
- Cephalaspidida3 sites
- Chondrichthyes3 sites
- Dickosteus3 sites
- Dipterus3 sites
- Elasmobranchii3 sites
- Ganosteus artus3 sites
- Gyroptychius pauli3 sites
- Heterosteus ingens3 sites
- Holoptychiidae3 sites
- Osteolepididae3 sites
- Pycnosteus palaeformis3 sites
- Schizosteus striatus3 sites
- Tartuosteus3 sites
- Tartuosteus giganteus3 sites
- Vladimirolepis proia3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Holonema, 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
13 references- The Middle Devonian fishes of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia) and Belarus5
- An examination of the Devonian fishes of Michigan4
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates3
- On some new and little known Paleozoic vertebrates3
- A new species of the Devonian actinopterygian fish Moythomasia from Belarus1
- A new antiarch placoderm from the Emsian (Early Devonian) of Wuding, Yunnan, China1
- Devonian vertebrates from the Canning and Carnarvon Basins with an overview of Paleozoic vertebrates of Western Australia1
- Early Frasnian acanthodians from central Iran1
- Mid- and Late Devonian fossil fishes sites of England and Wales1
- A new vertebrate locality in the Eifelian of the Khush-Yeilagh formation, eastern Alborz, Iran1
- Preliminary report on Late Devonian fishes from central and eastern Iran1
- The Holonematidae (placoderm fishes), a review based on new specimens of Holonema from the Upper Devonian of Western Australia1
Each of the 24 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. 1 further reference is not listed. 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 Holonema
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mr Fink ( talk )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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, “Holonema”
- 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 itHolonematidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Newberry 1890