Apachesaurus
Apachesaurus is an extinct genus of metoposaurid temnospondyls from western North America.

Dr. Jeff Martz/NPS · 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
- MetoposauridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At least 21 million years on record.
The record covers at least 227.3 Mya to 205.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 201.4 Mya.
44 occurrences of Apachesaurus on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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
44 occurrences- Late Triassic100%
These 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
9 formations
- Chinle Formation27
- Redonda Formation · Chinle Group5
- Bull Canyon Formation · Dockum Group4
- Bluewater Creek Formation · Chinle Group2
- Tecovas Formation · Chinle Group2
- Cooper Canyon Formation · Dockum Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Apachesaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Apachesaurus and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Apachesaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
169 taxa- Anaschisma browni12 sites
- Archosauria12 sites
- Reptilia12 sites
- Arganodus11 sites
- Typothorax coccinarum11 sites
- Redfieldiidae10 sites
- Vancleavea campi10 sites
- Calyptosuchus wellesi9 sites
- Metoposauridae8 sites
- Postosuchus kirkpatricki8 sites
- Leptosuchus7 sites
- Mystriosuchini7 sites
- Colobodontidae6 sites
- Mystriosuchinae6 sites
- Ornithischia6 sites
- Parasuchidae6 sites
- Revueltosaurus callenderi6 sites
- Aetosauria5 sites
- Archosauriformes5 sites
- Shuvosaurus inexpectatus5 sites
- Sphenodontidae5 sites
- Triodus moorei5 sites
- Turseodus5 sites
- Actinopterygii4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 42 sites for Apachesaurus, 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
17 references- Late Triassic (Carnian and Norian) Tetrapods from the Southwestern United States19
- The vertebrate macrofauna of the Upper Triassic (Apachean) Redonda Formation, east-central New Mexico4
- Fossil occurrences and structural disturbance in the Triassic Chinle Formation at North Stinking Springs Mountain near St. Johns, Arizona3
- Rotten Hill: A Late Triassic bonebed in the Texas Panhandle, USA2
- Late Triassic microvertebrates from the lower Chinle Group (Otischalkian-Adamanian: Carnian), southwestern U.S.A.2
- The vertebrate fauna, biostratigraphy and biochronology of the type Revueltian land-vertebrate faunachron, Bull Canyon Formation (Upper Triassic), east-central New Mexico2
- Upper Triassic tetrapods from the Lucero Uplift, central New Mexico2
- Morphological and histological description of small metoposaurids from Petrified Forest National Park, AZ, USA and the taxonomy of Apachesaurus1
- Vertebrate fossil preservation in blue paleosols from the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, with implications for vertebrate biostratigraphy in the Chinle Formation1
- Lithostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, and vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Dockum Group (Upper Triassic), of southern Garza County, West Texas. Unpublished PhD thesis, Texas Tech University1
- Tetrapod fauna of the Upper Triassic (Revueltian) Owl Rock Formation, Chinle Group, Arizona1
- Unusual tetrapod teeth from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, USA1
Each of the 44 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. 5 further references are not listed. 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 Apachesaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dr. Jeff Martz/NPS
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itMetoposauridae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hunt 1993