Traquairaspis
Traquairaspis is a genus of extinct heterostracan agnathan fish known from the Silurian and Early Devonian periods. It is predominantly known from Late Silurian fluvial deposits from Wales and England: some species were also found in 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
- TraquairaspidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Chordata
Time the record covers
At least 7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 426.7 Mya to 419.62 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 432.9 Mya to 399.5 Mya.
32 occurrences of Traquairaspis on record. 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
32 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
10 formations
- Delorme Formation11
- Fraenkelryggen Formation5
- Peel Sound Formation5
- Somerset Island Formation5
- Cape Phillips Formation1
- Knoydart Formation · Arisaig Group1
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The named rock units Traquairaspis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
172 taxa- Corvaspis15 sites
- Cephalaspis7 sites
- Torpedaspis elongata7 sites
- Acanthodii4 sites
- Alainaspis platyrhina4 sites
- Homalaspidella4 sites
- Nikolivia elongata4 sites
- Pionaspis4 sites
- Poraspis4 sites
- Poraspis polaris4 sites
- Protopteraspis4 sites
- Ulutitaspis notidana4 sites
- Archegonaspis3 sites
- Bivalvia3 sites
- Boothiaspis alata3 sites
- Boothiaspis ovata3 sites
- Boreania minima3 sites
- Cyathaspididae3 sites
- Dinaspidella3 sites
- Gastropoda3 sites
- Lingula3 sites
- Machairaspis3 sites
- Nikolivia depressa3 sites
- Nikolivia gutta3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Traquairaspis, 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- Ostracoderm faunas of the Delorne and associated Siluri-Devonian Formations, North Western Territories, Canada11
- The vertebrate stratigraphy of the Lower Devonian (Red Bay Group and Wood Bay Formation) of Spitsbergen5
- A new subfamily of the Pteraspididae (Agnatha, Heterostraci) from the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian of Arctic Canada5
- A New Heterostracan from the Upper Silurian of Northwest Territories, Canada4
- Habitat of Llandoverian-Lochkovian eurypterids3
- Age of the basal ‘Lower Old Red Sandstone’ Stonehaven Group of Scotland: The oldest reported air-breathing land animal is Silurian (late Wenlock) in age1
- A Bohemian-type Silurian (Wenlock) pelecypod faunule from arctic Canada1
- Amphiaspidiformes (Heterostraci) from the Silurian of the Canadian Arctic archipelago1
- Lower Devonian Heterostraci from the Peel Sound formation, Prince of Wales Island, Northwest Territories1
Each of the 32 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 Traquairaspis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Apokryltaros
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Traquairaspis 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 itTraquairaspidae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kiaer 1932