Ocepechelon bouyai

Ocepechelon is an extinct genus of giant protostegid sea turtle known from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco. The feeding apparatus of Ocepechelon, a bony pipette-like snout, is unique among tetrapods and shares unique convergences with both syngnathid fishes and beaked whales.

Ocepechelon bouyai

Nathalie Bardet,Nour-Eddine Jalil, France de Lapparent de Broin, Damien Germain, Olivier Lambert, Mbarek Amaghzaz · CC BY 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
OcepechelonPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
Life habit
aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Chelonioidea

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72.7 Mya65.5 Mya

1 occurrence of Ocepechelon bouyai 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

1 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

1 formation

Couche III — 32.66°N, 6.64°W

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The named rock units Ocepechelon bouyai has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Ocepechelon bouyai and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Ocepechelon bouyai and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

No other named taxon is catalogued from that site.

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ocepechelon bouyai, and this reads all of them.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ocepechelon bouyai

Credit
Nathalie Bardet,Nour-Eddine Jalil, France de Lapparent de Broin, Damien Germain, Olivier Lambert, Mbarek Amaghzaz
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ocepechelon bouyai 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.

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 itOcepechelon through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bardet et al. 2013