Hyposaurus natator

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- HyposaurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pseudosuchia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Hyposaurus natator on record, most of them in the Late 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
2 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
- Hornerstown Formation · Rancocas Group1
- New Egypt Formation · Monmouth Group1
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The named rock units Hyposaurus natator has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Hyposaurus natator and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Hyposaurus natator and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
22 taxa- Agomphus pectoralis2 sites
- Agomphus1 site
- Anatalavis rex1 site
- Baculites ovatus1 site
- Belemnitella americana1 site
- Cucullaea vulgaris1 site
- Dryptosaurus aquilunguis1 site
- Edaphadon mirificus1 site
- Euclastes wielandi1 site
- Hadrosauridae1 site
- Hadrosauromorpha1 site
- Lambeosaurinae1 site
- Leptomylus forfex1 site
- Mosasaurus dekayi1 site
- Mosasaurus hoffmannii1 site
- Osteopygis emarginatus1 site
- Prognathodon rapax1 site
- Propleura borealis1 site
- Russellosaurina1 site
- Taphrosphys nodosus1 site
- Taphrosphys sulcatus1 site
- Telmatornis priscus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Hyposaurus natator, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Hyposaurus natator
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Hyposaurus natator 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHyposaurus through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Troxell 1925