Chthonosaurus
Chthonosaurus is an extinct genus of eutherocephalian therapsids from the Late Permian Kutulukskaya Formation of Russia. The type species Chthonosaurus velocidens was named in 1955.

Smokeybjb · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- ChthonosauridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Therocephalia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 7.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 264.28 Mya and 256.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Chthonosaurus on record, most of them in the Permian. 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- Permian100%
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
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The named rock units Chthonosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chthonosaurus and its relatives
PermianWhere Chthonosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.
Found in the same rock
28 taxa- Acropholis stensioei1 site
- Boreolepis tataricus1 site
- Chroniosuchus paradoxus1 site
- Dvinosaurus primus1 site
- Elginiidae1 site
- Esteria angulata1 site
- Esteria elongata1 site
- Esteria lineata1 site
- Esteria rotunda1 site
- Geryonichthys burchardi1 site
- Gnathorhiza1 site
- Gnathorhiza otschevi1 site
- Isadia1 site
- Isadia aristoviensis1 site
- Isadia suchonensis1 site
- Jarilinus mirabilis1 site
- Karpinskiosauridae1 site
- Karpinskiosaurus secundus1 site
- Leogorgon klimovensis1 site
- Microphon exiguus1 site
- Nycteroleterinae1 site
- Pareiasaurida1 site
- Peramodon1 site
- Seymouriamorpha indet.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Chthonosaurus, 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
1 referenceEach 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 content1
Picture of Chthonosaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Smokeybjb
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chthonosaurus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itChthonosauridae through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vjushkov 1955