Monstersauria

Monstersauria is a clade of anguimorph lizards, defined as all taxa more closely related to Heloderma than Varanus. It includes Heloderma, as well as several extinct genera, such as Estesia, Primaderma and Gobiderma, but this group was found to be polyphyletic in the most recent and complete squamate phylogenetic analysis by Reeder et al. (2015).

Monstersauria

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
AnguimorphaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At least 78 million years on record.

The record covers at least 110.1 Mya to 31.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 113.2 Mya to 15.98 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 67 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 57 of 67 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 67 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 5 of 67 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 67 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 67 occurrencesMiocene115–112 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences112–108 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences102–98 Mya — about 1 occurrence98–95 Mya — about 2 occurrences95–92 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences88–85 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences85–81 Mya — about 7 occurrences81–78 Mya — about 11 occurrences78–75 Mya — about 11 occurrences75–71 Mya — about 10 occurrences71–68 Mya — about 8 occurrences68–65 Mya — about 5 occurrences61–58 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences58–54 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences44–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences41–38 Mya — about 1 occurrence38–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 2 occurrences31–28 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences28–24 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences24–21 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences110.1 Mya31.8 Mya115 Mya14 Mya

67 occurrences of Monstersauria on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

67 occurrences

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

20 formations

Oldman — 49.10°N, 110.94°WOldman — 49.08°N, 110.84°WOldman — 49.08°N, 110.68°WOldman — 49.16°N, 110.72°WOldman — 50.90°N, 111.80°WLance — 43.12°N, 104.64°WLance — 41.57°N, 108.67°WLance — 43.15°N, 104.57°WLance — 43.17°N, 104.53°WLance — 43.13°N, 104.49°WLance — 47.79°N, 104.56°WBaruungoyot — 43.49°N, 101.15°EBaruungoyot — 43.15°N, 99.45°EBaruungoyot — 43.32°N, 99.83°EHell Creek — 47.80°N, 106.10°WHell Creek — 47.55°N, 107.10°WHell Creek — 47.52°N, 107.18°WHell Creek — 46.41°N, 103.50°WHell Creek — 45.00°N, 103.19°WCedar Mountain — 38.66°N, 111.24°WCedar Mountain — 39.00°N, 111.00°WDjadokhta — 43.66°N, 100.90°EDjadokhta — 42.08°N, 102.17°EDjadokhta — 44.00°N, 104.00°EWapiti — 55.06°N, 119.11°WWapiti — 55.07°N, 118.69°WPerrière — 44.37°N, 1.73°EBrule — 40.80°N, 103.10°WBrule — 41.70°N, 103.10°WDinosaur Park — 50.84°N, 111.14°WDinosaur Park — 50.68°N, 108.09°WCerro del Pueblo — 25.54°N, 101.36°WForemost — 49.13°N, 110.87°WJudith River — 47.81°N, 109.59°WPaskapoo — 52.35°N, 113.77°WScollard — 51.91°N, 112.97°WFrenchman — 49.30°N, 108.40°WQuercy Phosphorites — 44.27°N, 1.63°ESeonso Conglomerate — 34.69°N, 127.18°EOhyamashimo — 35.08°N, 135.11°EEl Gallo — 30.05°N, 115.76°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Monstersauria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Monstersauria and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Monstersauria and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

738 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 59 sites for Monstersauria, 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

30 references

Each of the 67 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. 18 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Monstersauria

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Monstersauria 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

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 itAnguimorpha through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Norell and Gao 1997