Thalattosaurus

Uncredited · 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
- ThalattosauroideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Thalattosauria
Time the record covers
At least 3.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 237 Mya to 233.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 227.3 Mya.
4 occurrences of Thalattosaurus on record. 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Thalattosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
10 taxa- Acrodus wempliae1 site
- Enantiognathus1 site
- Gondolella constricta1 site
- Hybodus shastensis1 site
- Nectosaurus1 site
- Nectosaurus halius1 site
- Paralonectes1 site
- Phalarodon nordenskioeldii1 site
- Shastasaurus1 site
- Toretocnemus californicus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Thalattosaurus, 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
3 references- New thalattosaurs (Reptilia: Diapsida) from the Triassic Sulphur Mountain Formation of Wapiti Lake, British Columbia2
- A reexamination of Thalattosaurus and Nectosaurus and the relationships of the Thalattosauria (Reptilia: Diapsida)1
- Notes on the osteology of the thalattosaurian genus Nectosaurus1
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. 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 Thalattosaurus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Thalattosaurus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itThalattosauroidea through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Merriam 1904