Bottosaurus harlani

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
- BottosaurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Crocodylia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At most 11 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 61.66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Bottosaurus harlani 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
3 occurrences- Late Cretaceous73%
- Paleocene27%
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
- Hornerstown Formation · Rancocas Group2
- Severn Formation1
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The named rock units Bottosaurus harlani has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Bottosaurus harlani and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Bottosaurus harlani and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
121 taxa- Cretalamna appendiculata2 sites
- Enchodus ferox2 sites
- Ischyrhiza mira2 sites
- Mosasaurus2 sites
- Mosasaurus hoffmannii2 sites
- Paralbula casei2 sites
- Peritresius ornatus2 sites
- Rhombodus binkhorsti2 sites
- Squalicorax pristodontus2 sites
- Taphrosphys sulcatus2 sites
- Thoracosaurus neocesariensis2 sites
- Acipenser albertensis1 site
- Acteon1 site
- Adocus beatus1 site
- Adocus microglypha1 site
- Aetomylaeus striatus1 site
- Agomphus pectoralis1 site
- Albulidae1 site
- Allognathosuchus1 site
- Anchura abrupta1 site
- Anomoeodus phaseolus1 site
- Atractosteus1 site
- Aves1 site
- Baculites1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Bottosaurus harlani, 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- A Late Cretaceous (Severn Formation) Vertebrate Assemblage from Bowie, Maryland1
- The Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction event in the North Atlantic coastal plain1
- Paleoecology of the Delaware Valley region. Part II: Cretaceous to Quartenary1
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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Bottosaurus harlani
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bottosaurus harlani was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itBottosaurus through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Meyer 1832)