Afrovenator abakensis

Afrovenator is an extinct genus of megalosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Middle or Late Jurassic Tiourarén Formation and maybe the Irhazer II Formation of the Sahara region of Niger in western Africa. Afrovenator represents the only named definitive Gondwanan megalosaur, with proposed material of the group present in the Tacuarembó Formation of Uruguay and the Tendaguru Formation of Tanzania, both dated to the Late Jurassic.

A picture published with the record for Afrovenator abakensis.

Kabacchi · CC BY 2.0 · 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
AfrovenatorPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Theropoda
Life habit
ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda

Time the record covers

At most 19 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 161.5 Mya and 143.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Middle Jurassic — about 0 of 2 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 2 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 2 occurrences162–161 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences161–161 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences161–160 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences160–159 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences159–159 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences159–158 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences158–157 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences157–157 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences157–156 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences156–156 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences156–155 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences155–154 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences154–154 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences154–153 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences153–152 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences152–152 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences152–151 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences151–150 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences150–150 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences150–149 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences149–148 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences148–148 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences148–147 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences147–146 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences146–146 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences146–145 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences145–145 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences145–144 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences144–143 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences143–143 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences162 Mya142.6 Mya

2 occurrences of Afrovenator abakensis on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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.

Found in

1 formation

Tiourarén — 16.83°N, 6.53°ETiourarén — 16.42°N, 7.72°E

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The named rock units Afrovenator abakensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Afrovenator abakensis and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Afrovenator abakensis and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

4 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Afrovenator abakensis, 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

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. 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 Afrovenator abakensis

Credit
Kabacchi
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itAfrovenator through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sereno et al. 1994