Sinemydidae

Sinemydidae is an extinct family of turtles from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of East Asia. Their exact position is engimatic, they have alternatively been considered stem-group cryptodires, but also "crownward stem-turtles" alongside Macrobaenidae, Paracryptodira, Xinjiangchelyidae, Thalassochelydia and Sandownidae outside of crown Testudines.

Sinemydidae

Shuai Shao, Lan Li, Yang Yang, Chang-Fu Zhou · CC BY 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
EucryptodiraPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
Life habit
aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Cryptodira

Time the record covers

At least 100 million years on record.

The record covers at least 161.5 Mya to 60.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 57.5 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 38 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 38 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 35 of 38 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 38 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 38 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 0 of 38 occurrences170–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–163 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences163–159 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences144–140 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences140–136 Mya — about 2 occurrences136–132 Mya — about 4 occurrences132–128 Mya — about 2 occurrences128–124 Mya — about 5 occurrences124–121 Mya — about 9 occurrences121–117 Mya — about 5 occurrences117–113 Mya — about 3 occurrences113–109 Mya — about 1 occurrence109–105 Mya — about 1 occurrence105–101 Mya — about 1 occurrence101–98 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences94–90 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences90–86 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences86–82 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences63–59 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences59–55 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences161.5 Mya60.9 Mya170 Mya55 Mya

38 occurrences of Sinemydidae 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

38 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

17 formations

Yixian — 41.60°N, 120.87°EYixian — 41.47°N, 121.19°EYixian — 41.60°N, 120.82°EYixian — 40.97°N, 120.94°EYixian — 41.42°N, 118.97°EYixian — 41.53°N, 121.02°ELuohandong — 38.92°N, 108.08°ELuohandong — 40.00°N, 108.00°ELianmuqin — 46.10°N, 85.67°ELianmuqin — 43.55°N, 87.26°ELianmuqin — 46.04°N, 85.79°EJiufotang — 42.14°N, 118.85°EJiufotang — 40.91°N, 119.50°EJiufotang — 40.65°N, 119.68°EMengyin — 35.87°N, 117.95°EKuwajima — 36.17°N, 136.63°EHutubihe — 43.88°N, 87.27°EKitadani — 36.12°N, 136.54°ELaohongdong — 39.09°N, 107.99°EOkurodani — 36.05°N, 136.88°EKhulsangol — 45.85°N, 108.40°EShaximiao — 29.58°N, 105.07°EGoler — 35.50°N, 117.77°WChengzihe — 45.30°N, 130.97°EBaynshire — 44.45°N, 107.38°EJingchuan — 38.97°N, 107.17°EHengtongshan — 42.42°N, 125.85°E

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The named rock units Sinemydidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sinemydidae and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

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

Found in the same rock

218 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Sinemydidae, 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

35 references

Each of the 38 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. 23 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 Sinemydidae

Credit
Shuai Shao, Lan Li, Yang Yang, Chang-Fu Zhou
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Sinemydidae 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 itEucryptodira through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Yeh 1963)