Dryolestes
Dryolestes is an extinct genus of Late Jurassic mammal from the Morrison Formation and the Alcobaça Formation of Portugal. The type species Dryolestes priscus is present in stratigraphic zones 2, 5, and 6.

Othniel Charles Marsh · 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
- DryolestidaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 154.8 Mya and 143.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Dryolestes on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
16 occurrences- Late Jurassic100%
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
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The named rock units Dryolestes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Dryolestes and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Dryolestes and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
228 taxa- Mammalia6 sites
- Cteniogenys antiquus5 sites
- Glyptops5 sites
- Goniopholis5 sites
- Allosaurus4 sites
- Anura4 sites
- Camarasaurus4 sites
- Caudata4 sites
- Theropoda4 sites
- Actinopterygii3 sites
- Amblotherium3 sites
- Amblotherium debilis3 sites
- Crocodylia3 sites
- Dorsetisaurus3 sites
- Dryolestidae3 sites
- Laolestes eminens3 sites
- Multituberculata3 sites
- Ophiopsis3 sites
- Ornithopoda3 sites
- Plagiaulacidae3 sites
- Allosaurus fragilis2 sites
- Amblotherium gracilis2 sites
- Camptosaurus2 sites
- Ceratodus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Dryolestes, 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
12 references- Paleoecological analysis of the vertebrate fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain region, U.S.A.3
- Dryolestidae (Dryolestida, Mammalia) aus dem Oberen Jura von Portugal2
- American Mesozoic Mammalia2
- A new dryolestid fossil from the Late Jurassic illuminates molar root structure of dryolestids1
- A preliminary report of the fossil mammals from a new microvertebrate locality in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, Grand County, Utah1
- Mammalian faunas of the Morrison Formation1
- Biography of William Harlow Reed: the story of a frontier fossil collector1
- New Jurassic mammals from Como Bluff, Wyoming, and the interrelationships of non-tribosphenic Theria1
- Discovery of Cretaceous Mammalia. Part III1
- American Jurassic mammals1
- Notice of new Jurassic mammals representing two new orders1
- Fossil mammal from the Jurassic of the Rocky Mountains1
Each of the 16 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 content2
Picture of Dryolestes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Othniel Charles Marsh
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Dryolestes priscus · KU:KUVP:134101
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dryolestes”
- 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 itDryolestidae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1878