Apatopus

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- ParasuchidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phytosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida
Time the record covers
At least 21 million years on record.
The record covers at least 227.3 Mya to 205.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 201.4 Mya.
25 occurrences of Apatopus on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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
25 occurrences- Late Triassic100%
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
15 formations
- Passaic Formation · Chatham Group5
- Timezgadiouine Formation · Argana Group3
- Chinle Formation2
- Sloan Canyon Formation · Chinle Group2
- Hassberge Formation2
- Gettysburg Formation · Chatham Group1
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The named rock units Apatopus 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.
Apatopus and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Apatopus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
120 taxa- Rhynchosauroides10 sites
- Grallator8 sites
- Brachychirotherium7 sites
- Chirotheriidae6 sites
- Scoyenia6 sites
- Grallator tuberosus5 sites
- Gwyneddichnium4 sites
- Acanthichnus3 sites
- Brachychirotherium eyermani3 sites
- Brachychirotherium parvum3 sites
- Coelurosaurichnus3 sites
- Eubrontes sillimani3 sites
- Kouphichnium3 sites
- Pseudotetrasauropus3 sites
- Rhynchosauroides hyperbates3 sites
- Anchisauripus2 sites
- Atreipus2 sites
- Dinosauria2 sites
- Synorichthys2 sites
- Turseodus2 sites
- Aetosauria1 site
- Alinka cara1 site
- Amphibia1 site
- Annelida1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Apatopus, 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
22 references- The Late Triassic tetrapod ichnotaxon Apatopus lineatus (Bock 1952) and its distribution3
- Late Triassic tetrapod-dominated ichnoassemblages from the Argana Basin (Western High Atlas, Morocco)2
- New discoveries of archosaur and other tetrapod footprints from the Timezgadiouine Formation (Irohalene Member, Upper Triassic) of the Argana Basin, western High Atlas, Morocco – ichnotaxonomic implications1
- A new dicynodont–archosaur assemblage from the Late Triassic (Carnian) of Poland1
- Late Triassic tetrapod tracks of western North America1
- Ancient animal footprints and traces in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, south-central Utah1
- The oldest Late Triassic footprint assemblage from North America (Pekin Formation, Deep River basin, North Carolina, USA)1
- Lockley and Hunt, 19951
- Biostratigraphy of vertebrate footprints in the Late Triassic section of the Newark Basin, Pennsylvania: reassessment of stratigraphic ranges1
- Late Triassic vertebrate tracks in the Dinosaur National Monument area1
- Are-evaluation of the taxonomy of Newark Supergroup saurischian dinosaur tracks, using extensive statistical data froma recently exposed tracksite near Culpeper, Virginia1
- Stop 5.7: Middle Lockatong Formation at Byram, NJ1
Each of the 25 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. 10 further references are not listed. 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 Apatopus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- 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 itParasuchidae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Baird 1957