Allodontidae
Allodontidae is a family of extinct multituberculate mammals that lived in what is now North America during the Upper Jurassic period. They were relatively early mammals and are within the informal suborder of "Plagiaulacida". The family was named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1889. Two genera are recognized: Ctenacodon and Psalodon.

Othniel Charles Marsh · Public Domain · 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
- MultituberculataPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Multituberculata
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Multituberculata
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 145.06 Mya to 141 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 139.1 Mya.
16 occurrences of Allodontidae on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
16 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
2 formations
- Morrison Formation15
- Lulworth Formation · Purbeck Group1
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The named rock units Allodontidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Allodontidae and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Allodontidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
178 taxa- Ceratodus6 sites
- Mammalia6 sites
- Camarasaurus4 sites
- Caudata4 sites
- Dryolestidae4 sites
- Goniopholis4 sites
- Theropoda4 sites
- Actinopterygii3 sites
- Allosaurus3 sites
- Baenidae3 sites
- Ctenacodon brentbaatar3 sites
- Cteniogenys antiquus3 sites
- Nanosaurus agilis3 sites
- Opisthias3 sites
- Ornithopoda3 sites
- Pterosauria3 sites
- Amblotherium2 sites
- Amblotherium debilis2 sites
- Amblotherium gracilis2 sites
- Amioidea2 sites
- Anura2 sites
- Ceratodus robustus2 sites
- Charophyta2 sites
- Coelurus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Allodontidae, 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
10 references- Connely, 20023
- Paleoecological analysis of the vertebrate fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain region, U.S.A.2
- American Mesozoic Mammalia2
- American Jurassic mammals2
- Notice of new Jurassic mammals2
- An unusually diverse northern biota from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Black Hills, Wyoming1
- New occurrences of Cteniogenys (Reptilia, Choristodera) in the Late Jurassic of Wyoming and South Dakota1
- Mammalian faunas of the Morrison Formation1
- Notice of new Jurassic mammals1
- Monograph of the fossil Mammalia of the Mesozoic formations1
Each of the 16 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 Allodontidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Othniel Charles Marsh
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Allodontidae 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 itMultituberculata through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1889