Heloderma suspectum

The Gila monster is a species of venomous lizard native to the Southwestern United States and the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. It is a heavy, slow-moving reptile, up to 22 in (56 cm) long, and it is the only venomous lizard native to the United States. The Gila monster is sluggish in nature, so it is not generally dangerous and very rarely poses a real threat to humans, though the bite is painful. Nonetheless, it has a fearsome reputation and is sometimes killed despite the species being protected by state law in Arizona.

Heloderma suspectum

Uncredited · 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
Gila monsterPBDB
Sits inside
HelodermaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Varanoidea
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 2 of 2 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

2 occurrences of Heloderma suspectum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

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.

Heloderma suspectum and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Heloderma suspectum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

68 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Heloderma suspectum, 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

2 references

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 Heloderma suspectum

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Heloderma suspectum was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itHeloderma through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1869