Meiolania platyceps

Claire Houck from New York City, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- MeiolaniaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
9 occurrences of Meiolania platyceps on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
9 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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 Meiolania platyceps has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Meiolania platyceps and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Meiolania platyceps and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
19 taxa- Anas castanea1 site
- Anas superciliosa1 site
- Anseranas semipalmata1 site
- Antechinus1 site
- Aves1 site
- Chelidae1 site
- Crocodyloidea1 site
- Diprotodontidae1 site
- Elapidae1 site
- Isoodon macrourus1 site
- Macropodidae1 site
- Palorchestidae1 site
- Plotiopsis sp.1 site
- Pseudomys1 site
- Rattus1 site
- Sphaerium1 site
- Teleostei1 site
- Varanus prisca1 site
- Velesunio1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Meiolania platyceps, 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
4 references- The cranial morphology of the extinct horned turtle, Meiolania platyceps, from the Pleistocene of Lord Howe Island, Australia5
- Description of Fossil Remains of two Species of a Megalanian Genus (Meiolania, Ow.), from Lord Howe's Island2
- The Wyandotte Local Fauna: A New, Dated, Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Northern Queensland1
- Preliminary note on the fossil remains of a chelonian reptile, Ceratochelys sthenurus, from Lord Howe’s Island, Australia1
Each of the 9 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 content1

Picture of Meiolania platyceps
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Claire Houck from New York City, USA
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Meiolania platyceps 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 itMeiolania through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.