Chaohusaurus

Chaohusaurus is an extinct genus of basal ichthyosauriform from the Early Triassic of Chaohu and Yuan'an, China.

Chaohusaurus

Ryosuke Motani, Da-yong Jiang mail, Andrea Tintori, Olivier Rieppel, Guan-bao Chen · CC BY 2.5 · 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
GrippiidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Ichthyosauria
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Ichthyopterygia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Ichthyosauria
Environment
marinePBDB, for Ichthyosauria

Time the record covers

At most 14 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 250.8 Mya and 237 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Triassic — about 8 of 9 occurrencesEarly TriassicMiddle Triassic — about 1 of 9 occurrencesMiddle TriassicLate Triassic — about 0 of 9 occurrences251–250 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences250–250 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences250–249 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences249–249 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences249–248 Mya — about 1 occurrence248–248 Mya — about 2 occurrences248–247 Mya — about 2 occurrences247–247 Mya — about 2 occurrences247–246 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences246–246 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences246–245 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences245–245 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences245–244 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences244–244 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences244–243 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences243–243 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences243–242 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences242–242 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences242–241 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences241–241 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences241–240 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences240–240 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences240–239 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences239–239 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences239–238 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences238–238 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences238–237 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences237–237 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences251.3 Mya236.5 Mya

9 occurrences of Chaohusaurus on record, most of them in the Early 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

9 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

Nanlinghu — 31.62°N, 117.82°E

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The named rock units Chaohusaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Chaohusaurus and its relatives

Early Triassic

Where Chaohusaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.

Found in the same rock

8 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Chaohusaurus, 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

7 references

Each of the 9 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 Chaohusaurus

Credit
Ryosuke Motani, Da-yong Jiang mail, Andrea Tintori, Olivier Rieppel, Guan-bao Chen
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Chaohusaurus 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 itGrippiidae through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Young and Dong 1972