Placodermi - Fossil Record

Fossil Record

The earliest identifiable placoderm fossils are from China and date to the mid to late Silurian. They are already differentiated into antiarchs and arthrodires, along with the other, more primitive groups. Apparently placoderms already diversified into their current groups before the start of the Devonian, somewhere during the early or mid Silurian, though earlier fossils of basal Placodermi have not been discovered in these particular strata.

The Silurian fossil record of the placoderms is both literally and figuratively fragmented. With one exception, all known Silurian placoderms exist today only as fragments, either scraps of armor, or isolated scales, of which some have been tentatively identified as either antiarch or arthrodire due to histological similarities. Although they have been identified, many of the Silurian arthrodire and antiarch species have not yet been formally described, or even named. Paradoxically, the best known, or rather, most commonly cited example of a Silurian placoderm, Wangolepis of Silurian China, is known only from a few fragments that currently defy attempts to place them in any of the recognized placoderm orders. So far, the only officially described Silurian placoderm, and the only Silurian placoderm known from more than scraps is the basal antiarch, Silurolepis, from the Ludlow epoch of Yunnan, China.

Paleontologists and placoderm specialists suspect that the scarcity of placoderms in the Silurian fossil record is due to placoderms' living in environments unconducive to fossil preservation, rather than a genuine scarcity. This hypothesis helps to explain the placoderms' seemingly instantaneous appearance and diversity at the very beginning of the Devonian.

During the Devonian, in stark contrast to the Silurian, the placoderms went on to inhabit and dominate almost all known aquatic ecosystems, both freshwater and saltwater. But this diversity ultimately suffered many casualties during the extinction event at the Frasnian–Famennian boundary, the Late Devonian extinctions. The remaining species then died out during the Devonian/Carboniferous extinction event; not a single species survived into the Carboniferous.