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

This dataset is derived from the DeepBone database (www.deepbone.org), which is constructed with the support of "Big Earth Data Science Engineering (CASEarth)" in the Strategic Priority Research Program. Because no automatic method could extract the paleontological data from literature reliably, we invited researchers and students to contribute data in their research fields. This dataset, which was extracted manually from 126 published papers or books from 1939 to 2021, consists of 64 genera and 6025 records, covering all antiarch lineages. We transferred the unstructured data from the literature to structured data for further research as detailed as possible. The 6025 records include 5867 fossil specimens that had been systematically described and documented, and 158 virtual specimens, which were introduced to describe the taxon information when no specimen was assigned for the referred records. Each record has at least one reference within our dataset. This is the most comprehensive dataset of Antiarcha up to now.