Phyllolepis
Searched as Phyllolepis thomsoni. The Paleobiology Database treats Phyllolepis as the accepted name.
Phyllolepis is the type genus of Phyllolepida, an extinct taxon of arthrodire placoderm fish from the middle to late Devonian. The species of Phyllolepis, themselves, are restricted to the Famennian-aged freshwater strata of the Late Devonian, around 360 million years ago. Fossils of this genus have been found primarily in Europe and North America. The end of the Devonian saw them disappear in a mass extinction.

Dmitry Bogdanov · CC BY 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
- PhyllolepidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Arthrodira
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Arthrodira
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthrodira
Time the record covers
At most 6.4 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 365.2 Mya and 358.86 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Phyllolepis 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
1 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Phyllolepis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Phyllolepis and its relatives
DevonianWhere Phyllolepis and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
67 taxa- Dipnoi3 sites
- Gronlandaspis3 sites
- Sarcopterygii3 sites
- Acanthodii2 sites
- Bothriolepis2 sites
- Bothriolepis cullodenensis2 sites
- Bothriolepis warreni2 sites
- Conchodus2 sites
- Holoptychius nobilissimus2 sites
- Palaeoniscidae2 sites
- Actinopterygii1 site
- Ageleodus pectinatus1 site
- Anostraca1 site
- Asterolepis maxima1 site
- Bothriolepis bindareei1 site
- Bothriolepis cf hydrophila1 site
- Bothriolepis hydrophila1 site
- Bothriolepis jani1 site
- Bothriolepis jarviki1 site
- Bothriolepis ornata1 site
- Ceratiocaris1 site
- Cheiracanthidae1 site
- Cheirolepididae1 site
- Chelyophorus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Phyllolepis, 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- First Articulated Phyllolepid Placoderm from North America, with Comments on Phyllolepid Systematics1
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 content1
Picture of Phyllolepis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dmitry Bogdanov
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phyllolepis was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Phyllolepis”
- 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 itPhyllolepidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agassiz 1843