Gymnophiona

Caecilians are a group of limbless, worm-shaped or snake-shaped amphibians, with either small eyes or no eyes, comprising the order Gymnophiona. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, making them some of the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures, such as earthworms. The body is noodle-like and often dark in colour, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. The caecilian head has several unique adaptations, such as fused skull and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and chemosensory tentacles between the eyes and nostrils. The skin is slimy, with ringlike markings or grooves, and in some species hides scales underneath.

Gymnophiona

Brian Gratwicke from DC, USA · CC BY 2.0 · 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
Also called
caecilianPBDB
Sits inside
GymnophionomorphaPBDB
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 least 52 million years on record.

The record covers at least 66 Mya to 13.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 83.6 Mya to 11 Mya.

Late Cretaceous — about 2 of 8 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 8 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 2 of 8 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 8 occurrencesMiocene85–83 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences83–80 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences80–78 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences78–75 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences75–72 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72–70 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences70–67 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences65–62 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences62–60 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences60–57 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences55–52 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences52–50 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences50–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–45 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences45–42 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42–40 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–12 Mya — about 2 occurrences12–9.5 Mya — about 1 occurrence66 Mya13.8 Mya85 Mya10 Mya

8 occurrences of Gymnophiona on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

8 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

5 formations

Villavieja — 3.25°N, 75.17°WVillavieja — 3.25°N, 75.17°WWadi Milk — 16.70°N, 31.14°ESanta Lucía — 18.03°S, 65.58°WEl Molino — 17.69°S, 65.94°WGlib Zegdou — 30.00°N, 4.00°W

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The named rock units Gymnophiona has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Gymnophiona and its relatives

Miocene

Where Gymnophiona and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

136 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Gymnophiona, 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

6 references

Each of the 8 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 Gymnophiona

Credit
Brian Gratwicke from DC, USA
Licence
CC BY 2.0
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 itGymnophionomorpha through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Rafinesque 1814)