Cardiocorax mukulu
Cardiocorax is an extinct genus of elasmosaurid known from the Late Cretaceous Mocuio Formation of Namibe Province, southern Angola. It contains a single species, Cardiocorax mukulu.

Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 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
- CardiocoraxPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Cardiocorax mukulu on record, most of them in the Late 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
2 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
1 formation
- Mocuio Formation · São Nicolau Group2
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The named rock units Cardiocorax mukulu has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cardiocorax mukulu and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Cardiocorax mukulu and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
No other named taxon is catalogued from any of those sites.
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Cardiocorax mukulu, and this reads all of them.
Entered from
2 references- The cranial anatomy and relationships of Cardiocorax mukulu (Plesiosauria: Elasmosauridae) from Bentiaba, Angola1
- A new elasmosaurid from the early Maastrichtian of Angola and the implications of girdle morphology on swimming style in plesiosaurs1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Cardiocorax mukulu
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cardiocorax mukulu · mguan:pa:278
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cardiocorax”
- 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 itCardiocorax through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Araújo et al. 2015