Clidastes liodontus

Everhart, M.J. et al. · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- ClidastesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 14 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 85.7 Mya and 72.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Clidastes liodontus 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
3 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
3 formations
- Mooreville Chalk Formation1
- Niobrara Formation · Colorado Group1
- Pen Formation · Terlingua Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Clidastes liodontus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Clidastes liodontus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Clidastes liodontus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2 taxa- Cretalamna bryanti1 site
- Ectenosaurus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Clidastes liodontus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- Late Cretaceous mosasauroids (Reptilia, Squamata) of the Big bend region in Texas, USA1
- Revisions to the biostratigraphy of the Moasasauridae (Squamata) in the Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Niobara Chalk (Late Cretaceous) of Kansas1
- The first record of Clidastes liodontus (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from the eastern United States1
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. 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 Clidastes liodontus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Everhart, M.J. et al.
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Clidastes liodontus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itClidastes through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Merriam 1894