Traquairaspidiformes
Traquairaspidiformes is an order of extinct heterostracan agnathan fish known from the Silurian and Early Devonian periods. Fossils are predominantly known from Late Silurian fluvial deposits from Wales and England: some species were also found in strata representing shallow water marine environment in Canada and North America.

Apokryltaros · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- HeterostraciPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Time the record covers
At least 9.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 413.02 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 426.7 Mya to 387.95 Mya.
23 occurrences of Traquairaspidiformes 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
23 occurrencesThese 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
- Psammosteus Limestone Formation6
- Pod''emnaya Formation3
- Dniester Formation3
- Freshwater West Formation2
- St. Maughans Formation1
- Spokojnaya Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Traquairaspidiformes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Traquairaspidiformes and its relatives
DevonianWhere Traquairaspidiformes and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
154 taxa- Phialaspis symondsi9 sites
- Protopteraspis gosseleti6 sites
- Cephalaspis5 sites
- Turinia pagei5 sites
- Weigeltaspis5 sites
- Nikolivia elongata4 sites
- Weigeltaspis brotzeni4 sites
- Climatiidae3 sites
- Turinia polita3 sites
- Weigeltaspis alta3 sites
- Zychaspis siemiradzkii3 sites
- Acanthodii2 sites
- Apalolepis brotzeni2 sites
- Corvaspis kingi2 sites
- Diademaspis2 sites
- Dnestraspis firma2 sites
- Ischnacanthidae2 sites
- Kujdanowiaspis podolica2 sites
- Larnovaspis major2 sites
- Mimetaspis concordis2 sites
- Parapteraspis plana2 sites
- Pattenaspis rogalai2 sites
- Podolaspis zychi2 sites
- Poraspidinae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Traquairaspidiformes, 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
9 references- The ostracoderm Phialaspis from the Lower Devonian of the Welsh Borderland and South Wales8
- The Early Devonian armoured agnathans of Podolia, Ukraine4
- Upper Silurian and Devonian heterostracan pteraspidomorphs (Vertebrata) from Severnaya Zemlya (Russia): a preliminary report with biogeographical and biostratigraphical implications4
- Protopteraspis Gosseleti (Vertebrata: Pteraspidomorphi: Heterostraci) from the Lower Devonian of Shropshire, England2
- Chapter 4. Early Devonian fossil fishes sites of the Welsh Borders1
- Habitat of Llandoverian-Lochkovian eurypterids1
- A diverse assemblage of early land plants from the Lower Devonian of the Welsh Borderland1
- New Pteraspididae (Agnatha, Heterostraci) from the Lower Devonian of Northwest Territories, Canada1
- The ostracoderm Pteraspis Kner and the relationships of the agnathous vertebrates1
Each of the 23 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. 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 Traquairaspidiformes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Apokryltaros
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Traquairaspidiformes was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- 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 itHeterostraci through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stensio 1958