Amphitherium

Amphitherium is an extinct genus of stem cladotherian mammal that lived during the Middle Jurassic of England. It was one of the first Mesozoic mammals ever described. A recent phylogenetic study found it to be the sister taxon of Palaeoxonodon. It is found in the Forest Marble Formation and the Taynton Limestone Formation.

Amphitherium

Carus Sterne · Public Domain · 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
AmphitheriidaePBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At most 2.9 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 168.2 Mya and 165.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Middle Jurassic — about 4 of 4 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences167–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166–165 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences165–165 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences165–165 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168.7 Mya164.8 Mya

4 occurrences of Amphitherium on record, most of them in the Middle 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

4 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

2 formations

Forest Marble — 50.71°N, 2.78°WForest Marble — 51.87°N, 1.27°WTaynton Limestone — 51.85°N, 1.43°W

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

Amphitherium and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Amphitherium and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

105 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Amphitherium, 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

4 references

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 Amphitherium

Credit
Carus Sterne
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Amphitherium 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 itAmphitheriidae through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. de Blainville 1838