Compsocerops
Compsocerops is an extinct genus of temnospondyl amphibians recovered from the Late Triassic Upper Maleri and Tiki Formations of India, and the Santa Maria Formation of Brazil.

Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com ) · CC BY 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
- ChigutisauridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At most 32 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 237 Mya and 205.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Compsocerops on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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 Triassic100%
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
- Maleri Formation · Gondwana Group1
- Santa Maria Formation · Rosário do Sul Group1
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The named rock units Compsocerops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Compsocerops and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Compsocerops and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
6 taxa- Buriolestes schultzi1 site
- Ixalerpeton polesinensis1 site
- Kuttycephalus triangularis1 site
- Polesinesuchus aurelioi1 site
- Saurischia1 site
- Venetoraptor gassenae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Compsocerops, 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
2 references- The presence of Compsocerops (Brachyopoidea: Chigutisauridae) (Late Triassic) in southern Brazil with comments on chigutisaurid palaeobiogeography1
- Chigutisaurid temnospondyls from the Late Triassic of India and a review of the Family Chigutisauridae1
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. 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 Compsocerops
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com )
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itChigutisauridae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sengupta 1995