Dryolestida

Dryolestida is an extinct order of mammals, known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They are considered basal members of the clade Cladotheria, close to the ancestry of therian mammals. It is also believed that they developed a fully mammalian jaw and also had the three middle ear bones. Most members of the group, as with most Mesozoic mammals, are only known from fragmentary tooth and jaw remains.

Dryolestida

P.Fernandes ( Trebaruna ) · 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
DryolestoideaPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At least 93 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 66 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 15 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 2 of 15 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 7 of 15 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 5 of 15 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 15 occurrences170–167 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences167–163 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences145–142 Mya — about 3 occurrences142–138 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences135–131 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences131–128 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences128–124 Mya — about 2 occurrences124–121 Mya — about 3 occurrences75–71 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences71–67 Mya — about 3 occurrences67–64 Mya — about 1 occurrence165.3 Mya72.2 Mya170 Mya64 Mya

15 occurrences of Dryolestida on record, most of them in the Early 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

15 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

7 formations

Ksar Metlili — 32.70°N, 3.22°WLos Alamitos — 41.95°S, 66.33°WEl Castellar — 40.67°N, 0.67°WEl Castellar — 40.66°N, 0.86°WLa Huérguina — 40.22°N, 1.98°WCamarillas — 40.64°N, 0.86°WAnoual — 32.52°N, 3.11°WAllen — 39.78°S, 66.70°W

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The named rock units Dryolestida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Dryolestida and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Dryolestida and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

242 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Dryolestida, 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

10 references

Each of the 15 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 Dryolestida

Credit
P.Fernandes ( Trebaruna )
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Dryolestida 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 itDryolestoidea through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Prothero 1981