Varanops brevirostris

ДиБгд at Russian Wikipedia · Public Domain · 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
- VaranopsPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 16 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 290.1 Mya and 274.4 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Varanops brevirostris on record, most of them in the Permian. 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
3 occurrences- Permian100%
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
2 formations
- Arroyo Formation · Clear Fork Group1
- Vale Formation · Clear Fork Group1
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The named rock units Varanops brevirostris 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.
Varanops brevirostris and its relatives
PermianWhere Varanops brevirostris and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.
Found in the same rock
70 taxa- Captorhinus2 sites
- Captorhinus aguti2 sites
- Diadectes2 sites
- Dimetrodon2 sites
- Abyssomedon williamsi1 site
- Acheloma cryptatheria1 site
- Acheloma cumminsi1 site
- Acleistorhinidae1 site
- Arisierpeton simplex1 site
- Arthropoda1 site
- Aspidosaurus1 site
- Baeotherates fortsillensis1 site
- Bolosaurus grandis1 site
- Bolterpeton1 site
- Bolterpeton carrolli1 site
- Cacops1 site
- Cacops aspidephorus1 site
- Cacops morrisi1 site
- Cacops woehri1 site
- Captorhinidae1 site
- Captorhinus kierani1 site
- Captorhinus magnus1 site
- Cardiocephalus peabodyi1 site
- Casea broilii1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Varanops brevirostris, 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
3 references- An Early Permian varanodontine varanopid (Synapsida: Eupelycosauria) from the Richards Spur locality, Oklahoma1
- An articulated skeleton of Varanops with bite marks: the oldest known evidence of scavenging among terrestrial vertebrates1
- American Permian Vertebrates1
Each of the 3 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Varanops brevirostris
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- ДиБгд at Russian Wikipedia
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itVaranops through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Williston 1911)