Metoposaurus bakeri

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
- MetoposaurusPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Metoposaurus
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At most 32 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 237 Mya and 205.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Metoposaurus bakeri on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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 Triassic100%
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
- Santa Rosa Sandstone Formation · Dockum Group1
- Wolfville Formation · Chatham Group1
- Cooper Canyon Formation · Dockum Group1
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The named rock units Metoposaurus bakeri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Metoposaurus bakeri and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Metoposaurus bakeri and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
35 taxa- Aetosauria2 sites
- Phytosauria2 sites
- Rauisuchidae2 sites
- Archosauriformes1 site
- Archosauromorpha1 site
- Argodicynodon boreni1 site
- cf. Procoelosaurus sp.1 site
- Cyzicus1 site
- Dicynodontia1 site
- Doswellia1 site
- Drepanosauridae1 site
- Dromomeron1 site
- Hyperodapedon1 site
- Hypsognathus1 site
- Malerisaurus1 site
- Metoposauridae1 site
- Osteichthyes1 site
- Paleorhinus sawini1 site
- Parasuchia indet.1 site
- Parasuchus1 site
- Procoelosaurus brevicollis1 site
- Prosauropoda1 site
- Pteromimus longicollis1 site
- Revueltosaurus callenderi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Metoposaurus bakeri, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
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
3 references- Lithostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, and vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Dockum Group (Upper Triassic), of southern Garza County, West Texas. Unpublished PhD thesis, Texas Tech University1
- The ichnogenus Atreipus and its significance for Triassic biostratigraphy1
- Description of a new species of Buettneria, with a discussion of the brain case1
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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Metoposaurus bakeri
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Metoposaurus bakeri was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itMetoposaurus through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Case 1931)