Cyamodontoidea

Cyamodontoidea is an extinct superfamily of placodont marine reptiles from the Triassic period. It is one of the two main groups of placodonts, the other being Placodontoidea. Cyamodontoids are distinguished from placodontoids by their large shells, formed from fused bony plates called osteoderms and superficially resembling the shells of turtles. Cyamodontoids also have distinctive skulls with narrow, often toothless jaws and wide, flaring temporal regions behind the eyes. Two large temporal openings are positioned at the top of the back of the skull, an arrangement that is known as the euryapsid condition and seen throughout Sauropterygia, the marine reptile group to which placodonts belong. Cyamodontoids are also distinguished by their large crushing teeth, which grow from the palatine bones on the roof of the mouth.

Cyamodontoidea

Ghedoghedo · 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
PlacodontiaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Sauropterygia

Time the record covers

At least 159 million years on record.

The record covers at least 243.43 Mya to 83.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 72.2 Mya.

Early Triassic — about 0 of 36 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 19 of 36 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 16 of 36 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 36 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 36 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 36 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 36 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 36 occurrencesLate Cretaceous250–244 Mya — about 1 occurrence244–238 Mya — about 14 occurrences238–232 Mya — about 6 occurrences232–226 Mya — about 2 occurrences226–220 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences220–214 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences214–208 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences208–202 Mya — about 8 occurrences202–196 Mya — about 1 occurrence87–81 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences81–75 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences75–69 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences243.43 Mya83.6 Mya250 Mya69 Mya

36 occurrences of Cyamodontoidea on record, most of them in the Middle 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

36 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

19 formations

Gevanim — 30.60°N, 34.82°ECalcare di Zu — 45.83°N, 9.27°ECalcare di Zu — 45.77°N, 9.60°ECalcare di Zu — 45.82°N, 9.80°EJilh — 26.39°N, 44.24°EKössener Schichten — 48.13°N, 16.24°ESaharonim — 30.60°N, 34.82°EZorzino Limestone — 45.68°N, 9.72°EGorno — 45.92°N, 9.92°EHauptdolomit — 48.08°N, 16.28°EXiaowa — 25.90°N, 105.42°ETarasci — 37.40°N, 31.85°EErfurt — 48.90°N, 9.20°EKoessen — 47.48°N, 10.41°EVeszprém Marl — 46.00°N, 18.00°ESan Cassiano — 46.54°N, 11.94°EMuschelkalk — 41.27°N, 1.12°EFalang — 25.67°N, 104.25°EKössen — 47.05°N, 9.70°EWestbury — 51.60°N, 2.63°WRio del Lago — 46.45°N, 13.31°E

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The named rock units Cyamodontoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cyamodontoidea and its relatives

Middle Triassic

Where Cyamodontoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.

Found in the same rock

185 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Cyamodontoidea, 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

20 references

Each of the 36 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. 8 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 Cyamodontoidea

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cyamodontoidea 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 itPlacodontia through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nopcsa 1923