Kaiwhekea katiki
Kaiwhekea is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous of what is now New Zealand.

ДиБгд · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- KaiwhekeaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Kaiwhekea katiki 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
1 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Kaiwhekea katiki has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Kaiwhekea katiki and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Kaiwhekea katiki and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Chatangiella campbellensis1 site
- Cribroperidinium edwardsii1 site
- Dimitobelus (Dimitocamax) hectori1 site
- Mosasauridae1 site
- Palaeocystodinium granulatum1 site
- Palambages1 site
- Plesiosauria1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Kaiwhekea katiki, 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 1 occurrence 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 content2

Picture of Kaiwhekea katiki
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- ДиБгд
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Kaiwhekea”
- 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 itKaiwhekea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cruickshank and Fordyce 2002