Myosaurus gracilis

Mojcaj · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- MyosaurusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Myosaurus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 251.902 Mya and 247 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Myosaurus gracilis on record, most of them in the Early 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
2 occurrences- Early 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
2 formations
- Fremouw Formation · Beacon Group1
- Normandien Formation · Beaufort Group1
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The named rock units Myosaurus gracilis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Myosaurus gracilis and its relatives
Early TriassicWhere Myosaurus gracilis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.
Found in the same rock
19 taxa- Aenigmasaurus grallator1 site
- Archosauriformes1 site
- Broomistega putterilli1 site
- Ericiolacerta parva1 site
- Galesaurus planiceps1 site
- Lydekkerina1 site
- Lydekkerina huxleyi1 site
- Lystrosaurus1 site
- Lystrosaurus curvatus1 site
- Lystrosaurus declivis1 site
- Lystrosaurus maccaigi1 site
- Lystrosaurus murrayi1 site
- Platycraniellus elegans1 site
- Procolophon trigoniceps1 site
- Prolacerta broomi1 site
- Proterosuchus fergusi1 site
- Scaloposaurus constrictus1 site
- Scaloposaurus hoffmanni1 site
- Thrinaxodon liorhinus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Myosaurus gracilis, 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- Myosaurus gracilis, an anomodont reptile from the Lower Triassic of Antarctica and South Africa1
- The cranial morphology of the Lower Triassic dicynodont Myosaurus gracilis1
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 content1

Picture of Myosaurus gracilis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Mojcaj
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Myosaurus gracilis 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 itMyosaurus through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hammer and Cosgriff 1981