Plesiosauridae

The Plesiosauridae are a monophyletic family of plesiosaurs named by John Edward Gray in 1825.

Plesiosauridae

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
PlesiosauroideaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Life habit
aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Environment
marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria

Time the record covers

At least 109 million years on record.

The record covers at least 192.9 Mya to 83.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 199.5 Mya to 66 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 9 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 2 of 9 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 2 of 9 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 0 of 9 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 2 of 9 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 9 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 9 occurrences202–198 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences198–193 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences193–188 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences188–184 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences184–179 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences179–174 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences170–165 Mya — about 2 occurrences142–137 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences137–133 Mya — about 1 occurrence133–128 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences86–82 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences82–77 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences77–73 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences73–68 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences68–63 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences192.9 Mya83.6 Mya202 Mya63 Mya

9 occurrences of Plesiosauridae 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

9 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

6 formations

Duwi — 25.20°N, 32.70°EDuwi — 26.10°N, 34.28°EDuwi — 26.10°N, 34.10°EAshdown — 50.67°N, 2.46°WWadhurst Clay — 50.86°N, 0.44°ECalcaires de Caen — 49.19°N, 0.40°WSão Gião — 40.19°N, 8.81°WGreat Oolite — 49.19°N, 0.37°W

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The named rock units Plesiosauridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Plesiosauridae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

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

Found in the same rock

61 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Plesiosauridae, 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

7 references

Each of the 9 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 Plesiosauridae

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 Plesiosauridae 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 itPlesiosauroidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1825