Neurankylus
Neurankylus is an extinct genus of turtles in the family Baenidae that lived between 112 and 61 million years ago in Canada and the United States. It was originally placed within the monotypic family Neurankylidae, but it has since been placed in the Neurankylinae, alongside Trinitichelys. The type species, Neurankylus eximius, was described by Lawrence Lambe in 1902. The species N. lithographicus was discovered in the Milk River Formation (Canada), alongside the holotype of the pachycephalosaurid dinosaur Acrotholus audeti.

Uncredited · 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
- BaenidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 85.7 Mya to 63.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 89.8 Mya to 60.9 Mya.
70 occurrences of Neurankylus 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
70 occurrencesThese 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
21 formations
- Kirtland Formation14
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group13
- Kaiparowits Formation9
- Fruitland Formation5
- Denver Formation4
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group4
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The named rock units Neurankylus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Neurankylus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Neurankylus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
247 taxa- Adocus21 sites
- Hadrosauridae20 sites
- Baenidae17 sites
- Trionychidae17 sites
- Crocodylia15 sites
- Theropoda12 sites
- Denazinemys nodosa11 sites
- Lepisosteus10 sites
- Ceratopsidae9 sites
- Champsosaurus9 sites
- Chelydridae8 sites
- Compsemys victa8 sites
- Testudines8 sites
- Basilemys7 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus7 sites
- Helopanoplia beecheri6 sites
- Lepisosteidae6 sites
- Teleostei6 sites
- Aspideretoides5 sites
- Cyclurus5 sites
- Mammalia5 sites
- Melvius5 sites
- Osteichthyes5 sites
- Plastomenidae5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 65 sites for Neurankylus, 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
29 references- Re-assessment of Late Campanian (Kirtlandian) turtles from the Upper Cretaceous Fruitland and Kirtland formations, San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA17
- Patterns of geographic variation in latest Cretaceous vertebrates: evidence from the turtle component10
- A Review of the Fossil Record of Turtles of the Clade Baenidae6
- The skull of Neurankylus eximius (Testudines: Baenidae) and a reinterpretation of the relationships of this taxon4
- Exceptional continental record of biotic recovery after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction3
- A new species of Neurankylus from the Milk River Formation (Cretaceous: Santonian) of Alberta, Canada, and a revision of the type species N. eximius3
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections3
- Turtles of the Aguja and Javelina Formations, Upper Cretaceous (Campanian – Maastrichtian), West Texas2
- Baenid turtles of the Kaiparowits Formation (Upper Cretaceous: Campanian) of southern Utah, USA2
- Baenid (Baenidae: Testudines) lower jaws from the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico1
- Fauna and setting of the Adelolophus hutchisoni type locality in the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Wahweap Formation of Utah1
- New cranial material of Gilmoremys lancensis (Testudines, Trionychidae) from the Hell Creek Formation of southeastern Montana, U.S.A1
Each of the 70 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. 17 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 Neurankylus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Neurankylus 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, “Neurankylus”
- 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 itBaenidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lambe 1902