Kourisodon
Kourisodon is an extinct genus of mosasaur. Fossils have been found from Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, as well as from the Izumi Group of Japan. These finds date back to the late Santonian stage and the late Campanian to the late Maastrichtian, respectively, of the Late Cretaceous. Kourisodon was originally described as a member of the "Leiodontini", more recently as a "Clidastine".

Roland Tanglao from Vancouver, Canada · 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- Sits inside
- MosasaurinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 83.6 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 85.7 Mya to 66 Mya.
3 occurrences of Kourisodon 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
3 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
3 formations
- Pender Formation1
- Hiketa Formation · Izumi Group1
- Mutsuo Formation · Izumi Group1
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The named rock units Kourisodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Kourisodon and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Kourisodon and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1 taxon- Mosasaurus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Kourisodon, 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- Mosasaur remains from the Upper Cretaceous Izumi Group of southwest Japan2
- Marine reptiles from the Nanaimo Group (Upper Cretaceous) of Vancouver Island1
Each of the 3 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 Kourisodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Roland Tanglao from Vancouver, Canada
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Kourisodon 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Kourisodon”
- 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 itMosasaurinae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nicholls and Meckert 2002