Bishops

Bishops is an extinct genus of mammals from Early Cretaceous of Australia. The only recorded species, Bishops whitmorei, was found on Flat Rocks, Wonthaggi Formation, Victoria. The genus was named in honour of Dr Barry Bishop, the former chairman of the Committee for Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society.

Bishops

Benjamin Healley · CC BY 4.0 · 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
BishopidaePBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At least 8.2 million years on record.

The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 113.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 110.1 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 3 of 3 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous126–126 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences126–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences113–113 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences113–112 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences112–112 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences112–111 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences111–111 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences111–110 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences110–110 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences121.4 Mya113.2 Mya126.3 Mya109.6 Mya

3 occurrences of Bishops on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

3 occurrences

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

2 formations

Eumeralla — 38.85°S, 143.55°E"Wonthaggi" — 38.66°S, 145.68°E

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The named rock units Bishops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Bishops and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Bishops and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

34 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Bishops, 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

3 references

Each of the 3 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 content2

Picture of Bishops

Credit
Benjamin Healley
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-ShareAlike
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itBishopidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rich et al. 2001