Thecadactylus rapicauda

The turnip-tailed gecko is a species of gecko widely distributed from Mexico southward through Central America and into South America as far south as Brazil, and on many islands in the Lesser Antilles. It was long thought to be the only member of its genus, until T. solimoensis was described in 2007.

Thecadactylus rapicauda

Postdlf · 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
Also called
turnip-tailed geckoPBDB
Sits inside
ThecadactylusPBDB
Diet
insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Gekkonidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Gekkonidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 2 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence629 ka0 Mya

2 occurrences of Thecadactylus rapicauda on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

2 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.

Thecadactylus rapicauda and its relatives

Holocene

Where Thecadactylus rapicauda and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

33 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Thecadactylus rapicauda, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 Thecadactylus rapicauda

Credit
Postdlf
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thecadactylus rapicauda 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 itThecadactylus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Houttuyn 1782