Stenotosaurus
Stenotosaurus is an extinct genus of capitosaurian temnospondyl within the family Stenotosauridae. It is known from three species, all of which lived during the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic. Fossils have been found in England and Germany.

Smokeybjb · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- MastodonsauridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At least 8.1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 245.19 Mya to 237 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 248.6 Mya to 201.4 Mya.
4 occurrences of Stenotosaurus on record, most of them in the Middle 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
4 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
- Bromsgrove Sandstone Formation · Sherwood Sandstone Group1
- Röttone Formation · Upper Buntsandstein Group1
- Upper Buntsandstein Formation1
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The named rock units Stenotosaurus 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.
Stenotosaurus and its relatives
Middle TriassicWhere Stenotosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.
Found in the same rock
5 taxa- Archosauria1 site
- Gyrolepis1 site
- Langeronyx brodiei1 site
- Mastodonsaurus1 site
- Rhombopholis scutulata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Stenotosaurus, 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
4 references- The Triassic labyrinthodonts from Germany1
- A review of the British Middle Triassic tetrapod assemblages1
- Stenotosaurus gracilis, ein neuer Capitosauride (Stegocephalia) aus den Unteren Röttonen Oberfrankens1
- On two new labyrinthodont skulls of the genera Capitosaurus and Aphaneramma1
Each of the 4 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Stenotosaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Smokeybjb
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Stenotosaurus 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 itMastodonsauridae through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Romer 1947