Cacops aspidephorus

Cacops, is a genus of dissorophid temnospondyls from the Kungurian stage of the early Permian of the United States. Cacops is one of the few olsoniforms whose ontogeny is known. Cacops fossils were almost exclusively known from the Cacops Bone Bed of the Lower Permian Arroyo Formation of Texas for much of the 20th century. New material collected from the Dolese Brothers Quarry, near Richards Spur, Oklahoma in the past few decades has been recovered, painting a clearer picture of what the animal looked and acted like.

Cacops aspidephorus

Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 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
CacopsPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Olsoniformes
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Olsoniformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Environment
brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda

Time the record covers

At most 8.9 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 283.3 Mya and 274.4 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Permian — about 3 of 3 occurrencesPermian283–283 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences283–283 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences283–282 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences282–282 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences282–282 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences282–281 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences281–281 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences281–281 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences281–281 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences281–280 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences280–280 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences280–280 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences280–279 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences279–279 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences279–279 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences279–278 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences278–278 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences278–278 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences278–277 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences277–277 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences277–277 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences277–276 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences276–276 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences276–276 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences276–275 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences275–275 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences275–275 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences275–274 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences283.8 Mya273.9 Mya

3 occurrences of Cacops aspidephorus on record, most of them in the Permian. 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

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

Vale — 33.60°N, 99.26°WVale — 32.13°N, 99.75°WArroyo — 33.76°N, 99.23°W

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

Cacops aspidephorus and its relatives

Permian

Where Cacops aspidephorus and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.

Found in the same rock

31 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Cacops aspidephorus, 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

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. 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 Cacops aspidephorus

Credit
Jonathan Chen
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cacops aspidephorus 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.

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 itCacops through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Williston 1910