Alamitosphenos mineri

Alamitosphenos is an extinct genus of sphenodontid reptile in the clade Opisthodontia known from the Late Cretaceous Los Alamitos Formation of Argentina. The genus contains a single species, Alamitosphenos mineri, known from a fragment of the lower jaw. This bone has small teeth toward the front, followed by a thin ridge and a robust symphyseal region forming a downward-projecting 'chin'.

Alamitosphenos mineri

SlvrHwk · CC BY 4.0 · 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
AlamitosphenosPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences72.7 Mya65.5 Mya

1 occurrence of Alamitosphenos mineri on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

1 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

Los Alamitos — 41.95°S, 66.32°W

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

Alamitosphenos mineri and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Alamitosphenos mineri and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

1 taxon

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Alamitosphenos mineri, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 Alamitosphenos mineri

Credit
SlvrHwk
Licence
CC BY 4.0
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 itAlamitosphenos through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agnolín et al. 2023