Ptychotherates bucculentus

Ptychotherates is an extinct genus of saurischian dinosaur known from the Late Triassic Chinle Formation of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, United States. The genus contains a single species, Ptychotherates bucculentus, known from a partial skull. The jugal bone of the skull is unusually tall, deeper than in any other Triassic dinosaur. Ptychotherates is closely related to Chindesaurus, Daemonosaurus, and Tawa, together forming the clade Morphoraptora within Herrerasauria.

Ptychotherates bucculentus

SlvrHwk · 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
PtychotheratesPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida

Time the record covers

At most 4.3 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 205.7 Mya and 201.4 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Late Triassic — about 1 of 1 occurrenceLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 1 occurrence206–206 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences206–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–205 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences205–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–204 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences204–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences203–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences203–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences203–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences203–203 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences203–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–202 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences202–201 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences206.2 Mya200.9 Mya

1 occurrence of Ptychotherates bucculentus on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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

Chinle — 36.33°N, 106.47°W

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

Ptychotherates bucculentus and its relatives

Late Triassic

Where Ptychotherates bucculentus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.

Found in the same rock

19 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ptychotherates bucculentus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

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 Ptychotherates bucculentus

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

No 3D scan of Ptychotherates bucculentus 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 itPtychotherates through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Srivastava and Nesbitt 2026