Pliosauroidea

Pliosauroidea is an extinct clade of plesiosaurs, known from the latest Triassic to early Late Cretaceous. They are best known for the subclade Thalassophonea, which contained crocodile-like short-necked forms with large heads and massive toothed jaws, commonly known as pliosaurs. More primitive non-thalassophonean pliosauroids resembled plesiosaurs in possessing relatively long necks and smaller heads. They originally included only members of the family Pliosauridae, of the order Plesiosauria, but several other genera and families are now also included, the number and details of which vary according to the classification used.

Pliosauroidea

MEHJones · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
PlesiosauriaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
nektonicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Environment
marinePBDB

Time the record covers

At least 127 million years on record.

The record covers at least 199.5 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 66 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 204 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 19 of 204 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 38 of 204 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 89 of 204 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 29 of 204 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 29 of 204 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 204 occurrences204–199 Mya — about 7 occurrences199–195 Mya — about 2 occurrences195–190 Mya — about 2 occurrences190–185 Mya — about 3 occurrences185–181 Mya — about 4 occurrences181–176 Mya — about 2 occurrences176–171 Mya — about 2 occurrences171–167 Mya — about 2 occurrences167–162 Mya — about 32 occurrences162–157 Mya — about 11 occurrences157–152 Mya — about 28 occurrences152–148 Mya — about 32 occurrences148–143 Mya — about 22 occurrences143–138 Mya — about 2 occurrences138–134 Mya — about 2 occurrences134–129 Mya — about 2 occurrences129–124 Mya — about 3 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 7 occurrences120–115 Mya — about 5 occurrences115–110 Mya — about 4 occurrences110–106 Mya — about 1 occurrence106–101 Mya — about 4 occurrences101–96 Mya — about 8 occurrences96–91 Mya — about 11 occurrences91–87 Mya — about 5 occurrences87–82 Mya — about 2 occurrences82–77 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences77–73 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences73–68 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences68–63 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences199.5 Mya72.2 Mya204 Mya63 Mya

204 occurrences of Pliosauroidea on record, most of them in the Late 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

204 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

62 formations

Kimmeridge Clay — 51.74°N, 1.31°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.25°N, 2.16°WKimmeridge Clay — 52.35°N, 0.22°EKimmeridge Clay — 51.76°N, 1.20°WKimmeridge Clay — 52.40°N, 0.28°EKimmeridge Clay — 53.39°N, 0.34°WKimmeridge Clay — 50.61°N, 2.45°WKimmeridge Clay — 50.61°N, 2.13°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.57°N, 1.80°WKimmeridge Clay — 54.15°N, 0.23°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.72°N, 1.16°WKimmeridge Clay — 50.57°N, 2.45°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.41°N, 2.00°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.35°N, 1.99°WKimmeridge Clay — 50.63°N, 2.34°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.04°N, 2.28°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.80°N, 0.85°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.03°N, 2.21°WKimmeridge Clay — 50.92°N, 2.90°WKimmeridge Clay — 51.37°N, 2.17°WOxford Clay — 52.54°N, 0.25°WOxford Clay — 51.75°N, 1.18°WOxford Clay — 52.57°N, 0.23°WOxford Clay — 52.07°N, 0.50°WOxford Clay — 52.22°N, 0.26°WOxford Clay — 50.61°N, 2.45°WOxford Clay — 51.50°N, 2.06°WOxford Clay — 52.55°N, 0.12°WPaja — 5.63°N, 73.57°WPaja — 5.65°N, 73.56°WPaja — 5.57°N, 73.53°WOrnatenton — 52.28°N, 8.76°EBlue Lias — 51.13°N, 2.77°WBlue Lias — 51.13°N, 2.73°WBlue Lias — 52.03°N, 2.15°WCarlile Shale — 39.47°N, 98.95°WCarlile Shale — 38.39°N, 99.83°WCarlile Shale — 39.05°N, 99.02°WCarlile Shale — 39.19°N, 99.03°WVaca Muerta — 39.19°S, 69.67°WVaca Muerta — 38.11°S, 70.50°WGreenhorn Limestone — 37.22°N, 103.60°WGreenhorn Limestone — 39.00°N, 98.92°WGreenhorn Limestone — 38.91°N, 98.53°WWhite Lias — 51.12°N, 2.73°WLa Casita — 24.13°N, 100.18°WLa Casita — 24.96°N, 100.97°WCoral Rag — 54.13°N, 0.80°WCoral Rag — 51.75°N, 1.13°WLa Caja — 24.44°N, 99.18°WLa Caja — 25.04°N, 100.95°WLa Caja — 25.04°N, 101.76°W"Wonthaggi" — 38.67°S, 145.68°E"Wonthaggi" — 38.54°S, 145.39°EAmpthill Clay — 52.18°N, 0.13°WHasle — 55.18°N, 14.72°EWhitby Mudstone — 54.40°N, 0.50°WWhitby Mudstone — 54.49°N, 0.61°WGriman Creek — 29.43°S, 147.98°EGriman Creek — 26.08°S, 148.54°EWallumbilla — 20.22°S, 143.13°EWallumbilla — 30.85°S, 143.08°EUmia — 23.68°N, 69.02°EUmia — 23.73°N, 69.86°EToolebuc — 20.84°S, 144.20°EToolebuc — 20.73°S, 143.14°ECharmouth Mudstone — 50.73°N, 2.91°WOxford Clay — 50.75°N, 1.80°EAgardhfjellet — 78.32°N, 16.18°EKimmeridge Clay — 49.49°N, 0.11°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Pliosauroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 38 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 25 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pliosauroidea and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Pliosauroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

583 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 171 sites for Pliosauroidea, 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

118 references

Each of the 204 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. 106 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 Pliosauroidea

Credit
MEHJones
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pliosauroidea 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 itPlesiosauria through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Welles 1943