Djupedalia engeri
Djupedalia is an extinct genus of cryptoclidid plesiosauroid plesiosaur known from the uppermost Jurassic of central Spitsbergen, Norway. It is named after Øystein Djupedal, the former Minister of Education and Research who helped fund the fossil excavation with a budget of 1.2 million Norwegian kroner.

Connor Ashbridge · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- DjupedaliaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Time the record covers
At most 6.1 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 149.2 Mya and 143.1 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Djupedalia engeri on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
1 occurrences- Late Jurassic100%
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
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The named rock units Djupedalia engeri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Djupedalia engeri and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Djupedalia engeri and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
No other named taxon is catalogued from that site.
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Djupedalia engeri, and this reads all of them.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 Djupedalia engeri
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Connor Ashbridge
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Djupedalia engeri 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, “Djupedalia”
- 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 itDjupedalia through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Knutsen et al. 2012