Oligokyphus
Oligokyphus is an extinct genus of herbivorous tritylodontid cynodont known from the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic of Europe, Asia and North America.

Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com ) · CC BY 2.5 · 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
- TritylodontidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 8.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 201.4 Mya to 192.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 205.7 Mya to 184.2 Mya.
12 occurrences of Oligokyphus on record, most of them in the Early Jurassic. 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
12 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
3 formations
- Kayenta Formation · Glen Canyon Group4
- Exter Formation · Keuper Group2
- Lufeng Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Oligokyphus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Oligokyphus and its relatives
Early JurassicWhere Oligokyphus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
88 taxa- Archosauria4 sites
- Kayentachelys3 sites
- Scutellosaurus lawleri3 sites
- Sphenodontia3 sites
- Dinnebitodon2 sites
- Haramiyidae2 sites
- Scutellosaurus2 sites
- Testudines2 sites
- Theropoda2 sites
- Thomasia moorei2 sites
- Tritylodontidae2 sites
- Acrodus1 site
- Acrodus anningiae1 site
- Allotheria1 site
- Anura1 site
- Arnioceras1 site
- Belemnoidea1 site
- Bienotherium minor1 site
- Bienotherium yunnanense1 site
- Birgeria acuminata1 site
- Brachiopoda1 site
- Bridetherium dorisae1 site
- Ceratodus1 site
- Chondrichthyes1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Oligokyphus, 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
6 references- Fossil Vertebrate Collections3
- The fauna and palaeoenvironment of St. Bride's Island: evidence from the Lower Jurassic fissure fills of South Wales3
- The Liassic therapsid Oligokyphus2
- Die Säugerzähne des württembergischen Rhät-Lias-Bonebeds2
- Oligokyphus (Cynodontia: Tritylodontidae) from the Lower Lufeng Formation (Lower Jurassic) of Yunnan, China1
- First record of the tritylodontid Oligokyphus (Synapsida) from the Lower Jurassic of western North America1
Each of the 12 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. 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 Oligokyphus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com )
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Oligokyphus 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, “Oligokyphus”
- 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 itTritylodontidae through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hennig 1922