Dataset of antiarch placoderms (the most basal jawed vertebrates) throughout Middle Paleozoic

Antiarch placoderms, the most basal jawed vertebrates, have the potential to enlighten the origin of the last common ancestor of jawed vertebrates. Quantitative study based on credible data is more convincing than qualitative study. To reveal the antiarch distribution in space and time, we created a comprehensive structured dataset of antiarchs comprising 64 genera and 6025 records. This dataset, which includes associated chronological and geographic information, has been digitalized from academic publications manually into the DeepBone database as a dateset. We implemented the paleogeographic map marker to visualize the biogeography of antiarchs. The comprehensive data of Antiarcha allow us to generate its biodiversity and variation rate changes throughout its duration. Structured data of antiarchs has tremendous research potential, including testing hypotheses in the fields of the biodiversity changes, distribution, differentiation,population and community composition. Also, it will be easily accessible by the other tools to generate new understanding on the evolution of early vertebrates. The data file described in this paper is available on https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5639529 (Pan and Zhu, 2021).