Kimmerosaurus langhami
Kimmerosaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the family Cryptoclididae. It is known from remains found in England and Norway.

Alexander Lovegrove · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- KimmerosaurusPBDB
- 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 9.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 154.8 Mya and 145.06 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Kimmerosaurus langhami on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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 Jurassic100%
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
- Kimmeridge Clay Formation · Ancholme Group2
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The named rock units Kimmerosaurus langhami has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Kimmerosaurus langhami and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Kimmerosaurus langhami and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
10 taxa- Metriorhynchidae2 sites
- Cimoliasaurus1 site
- Crocodylomorpha1 site
- Pelobatochelys blakii1 site
- Plesiosauria1 site
- Plesiosauroidea1 site
- Pliosaurus brachydeirus1 site
- Pterosauria1 site
- Tropidemys1 site
- Tropidemys langii1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Kimmerosaurus langhami, 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
2 references- New material of the plesiosaur Kimmerosaurus langhami Brown from the Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset1
- The English Upper Jurassic Plesiosauroidea (Reptilia) and a review of the phylogeny and classification of the Plesiosauria1
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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Kimmerosaurus langhami
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alexander Lovegrove
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Kimmerosaurus langhami · mjml:EC K2134
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 itKimmerosaurus through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1981