Protopsephurus

Protopsephurus

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
ProtopsephurinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Acipenseriformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Acipenseriformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Acipenseriformes

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 125.77 Mya and 119.57 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 3 of 3 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous126–126 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–123 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences123–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–122 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences122–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121–121 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121–120 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences120–120 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences120–120 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences120–120 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126.3 Mya119.1 Mya

3 occurrences of Protopsephurus on record, most of them in the Early 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

3 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

  • Yixian Formation · Jehol GroupLiaoning, Nei Mongol · CN · 125.77–119.57 Mya3
Yixian — 41.20°N, 119.23°EYixian — 41.17°N, 119.40°EYixian — 41.42°N, 118.97°E

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

Protopsephurus and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Protopsephurus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

29 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Protopsephurus, 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

3 references

Each of the 3 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 Protopsephurus

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itProtopsephurinae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lu 1994