Cimoliasaurus

Cimoliasaurus was a plesiosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the eastern United States, with fossils known from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Maryland.

Cimoliasaurus

Leidy · 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
ElasmosauridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Life habit
aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Environment
marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Length
7.6 mWikidata

Time the record covers

At least 72 million years on record.

The record covers at least 145.06 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 66 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 1 of 18 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 18 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 16 of 18 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 18 occurrences157–153 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences153–150 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences150–147 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences147–144 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences123–120 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences120–117 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences117–113 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences113–110 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–98 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences98–95 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences95–92 Mya — about 1 occurrence92–89 Mya — about 1 occurrence89–86 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences86–83 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences83–80 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences80–77 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences77–73 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences73–70 Mya — about 3 occurrences70–67 Mya — about 4 occurrences67–64 Mya — about 2 occurrences145.06 Mya72.2 Mya157 Mya64 Mya

18 occurrences of Cimoliasaurus 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

18 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

10 formations

Navesink — 40.31°N, 74.22°WNavesink — 39.74°N, 75.18°WNavesink — 40.13°N, 74.51°WNavesink — 40.38°N, 74.21°WSevern — 38.91°N, 76.85°WSevern — 38.91°N, 76.85°WSevern — 38.96°N, 76.71°WEagle Ford — 31.53°N, 97.21°WBearpaw Shale — 47.64°N, 109.35°WWallumbilla — 30.85°S, 143.08°EKimmeridge Clay — 50.61°N, 2.45°WQuiriquina — 36.72°S, 73.12°WNew Egypt — 39.73°N, 75.19°WBila-Hora — 49.90°N, 15.90°EMooreville Chalk — 33.48°N, 92.13°W

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The named rock units Cimoliasaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cimoliasaurus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Cimoliasaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

232 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Cimoliasaurus, 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

15 references

Each of the 18 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. 3 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 Cimoliasaurus

Credit
Leidy
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cimoliasaurus 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 itElasmosauridae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leidy 1851