Placodermi
Searched as Placodermi indet.. The Paleobiology Database treats Placodermi as the accepted name.
Placoderms are vertebrate animals of the class Placodermi, an extinct group of prehistoric fish known from Paleozoic fossils during the Silurian and the Devonian periods. While their endoskeletons are mainly cartilaginous, their head and thorax were covered by articulated armoured plates, and the rest of the body was scaled or naked depending on the species.

User:Haplochromis · 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- Also called
- armour-plated fishPBDB
- Sits inside
- GnathostomataPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 47 million years on record.
The record covers at least 413.02 Mya to 365.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 419.62 Mya to 358.86 Mya.
28 occurrences of Placodermi on record, most of them in the Devonian. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
28 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
11 formations
- Windmill Limestone Formation8
- Lepel Formation3
- Upper Drake Bay Formation1
- Tarut Formation1
- Selscheid Formation1
- Little Cedar Formation1
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The named rock units Placodermi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Placodermi and its relatives
DevonianWhere Placodermi and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
1,755 taxa- Glyptolepis21 sites
- Acanthodii16 sites
- Millerosteus minor16 sites
- Cheirolepis13 sites
- Dipterus13 sites
- Osteolepididae13 sites
- Sarcopterygii13 sites
- Byssacanthus dilatatus12 sites
- Acanthodes11 sites
- Dipnoi11 sites
- Arthrodira10 sites
- Bothriolepis10 sites
- Cheiracanthus10 sites
- Coccosteus cuspidatus10 sites
- Orvikuina10 sites
- Actinolepis tuberculata9 sites
- Actinopterygii9 sites
- Diplacanthus9 sites
- Dipterus valenciennesi9 sites
- Holoptychiidae9 sites
- Moythomasia9 sites
- Onychodus9 sites
- Asterolepis8 sites
- Asterolepis estonica8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 481 sites for Placodermi, and this reads 240 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
17 references- Early Devonian vertebrate microfossils from the Simpson Park Range, Eureka County, Nevada8
- A new species of ray-finned fish (Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii) from the upper Emsian and lowermost Eifelian deposits of Belarus3
- New Early Devonian (late Emsian) placoderms from Belarus3
- Frasnian crinoid associations of the Prüm Syncline (Eifel, Rhenish Massif, Germany) – biostratigraphic framework and macrofossil assemblages1
- A new dipnoan genus from the Middle Devonian of Huize, Yunnan, China1
- An examination of the Devonian fishes of Michigan1
- An Early Devonian fish fauna from an unnamed sandstone in Wendy 1 drillhole, northern Perth Basin1
- First decapod crustaceans in a Late Devonian continental ecosystem1
- Occurrence of Sanqiaspis, Liu, 1975 (Vertebrata, Galeaspida) in the Lower Devonian of Vietnam, with remarks on the anatomy and systematics of the Sanqiaspididae1
- Microvertebrate biostratigraphy of Upper Devonian (Frasnian) carbonate rocks in the Canning and Carnarvon basins of Western Australia1
- Angustidontus, a Late Devonian pelagic predatory crustacean1
- Die Fossilführung des Mitteldevons im Raum Attendorn-Olpe (West-Sauerland; Rechtsrheinisches Schiefergebirge) [Middle Devonian fossils of the Attendorn-Olpe area (western Sauerland; Rhenish Massif]1
Each of the 28 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. 5 further references are 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 content2
Picture of Placodermi
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Haplochromis
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access 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, “Placoderm”
- 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 itGnathostomata through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (M'Coy 1848)