Chinlea
Chinlea is an extinct genus of late Triassic Mawsoniid coelacanth fish found in and named after the Chinle Formation that crops out in the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico. The word “Chinle” comes from the Navajo word meaning "flowing out", referencing the location where water flows out of the Canyon de Chelly. They were also possibly found in the Dockum Group.

SeismicShrimp · CC BY 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
- MawsoniidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At most 36 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 237 Mya and 201.4 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Chinlea 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
11 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
3 formations
- Chinle Formation9
- Colorado City Formation · Dockum Group1
- Tecovas Formation · Dockum Group1
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The named rock units Chinlea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Chinlea and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Chinlea and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
118 taxa- Semionotus6 sites
- Lasalichthys stewarti5 sites
- Redfieldiidae5 sites
- Cionichthys dunklei4 sites
- Archosauriformes3 sites
- Calyptosuchus wellesi3 sites
- Hesperosuchus agilis3 sites
- Poposaurus gracilis3 sites
- Procolophonidae3 sites
- Sphenodontidae3 sites
- Turseodus3 sites
- Vancleavea campi3 sites
- Acaenasuchus geoffreyi2 sites
- Acrodus2 sites
- Anaschisma2 sites
- Anaschisma browni2 sites
- Archosauria2 sites
- Australosomus2 sites
- Cionichthys2 sites
- Crocodylomorpha2 sites
- Cynodontia2 sites
- Drepanosauridae2 sites
- Hemicalypterus weiri2 sites
- Kuehneosauridae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Chinlea, 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
6 references- Late Triassic fishes from the western United States4
- Relationships of Late Triassic basin evolution and faunal replacement in the southwestern United States: perspectives from the upper part of the Chinle Formation in northern Arizona2
- Vertebrate paleontology of the Dockum Group, western Texas and eastern New Mexico2
- Reinvestigation of Late Triassic fish sites in the Chinle Group, San Juan County, Utah: new discoveries1
- Triassic vertebrate fossils in Arizona1
- Fossil occurrences and structural disturbance in the Triassic Chinle Formation at North Stinking Springs Mountain near St. Johns, Arizona1
Each of the 11 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 Chinlea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- SeismicShrimp
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chinlea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Chinlea”
- 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 itMawsoniidae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schaeffer 1967