Dryptosauridae
Tyrannosauroidea is a superfamily of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs that includes the family Tyrannosauridae as well as more basal relatives. Tyrannosauroids lived on the Laurasian supercontinent beginning in the Jurassic Period. By the end of the Cretaceous Period, tyrannosauroids were the dominant large predators in the Northern Hemisphere, culminating in the gigantic Tyrannosaurus. Fossils of tyrannosauroids have been recovered on what are now the continents of North America, Europe and Asia. If Megaraptora is part of Tyrannosauroidea, this would extend the distribution of the group to Australia and South America, and possible fragmentary remains of tyrannosauroids have also been reported from these continents.

User:Mgiganteus1 Tony Cairns ★Kumiko★ Traumador the Tyrannosaur Laika ac · 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
- CarnosauriaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Carnosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 72.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Dryptosauridae 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
4 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
- Merchantville Formation · Matawan Group2
- Marshalltown Formation · Matawan Group1
- Navesink Formation · Monmouth Group1
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The named rock units Dryptosauridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Dryptosauridae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Dryptosauridae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
62 taxa- Anomoeodus latidens1 site
- Archaeolamna kopingensis1 site
- Batoidea1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
- Borealosuchus1 site
- Brachyrhizodus wichitaensis1 site
- Cantioscyllium decipiens1 site
- Carcharias samhammeri1 site
- Chiloscyllium greeni1 site
- Chondrichthyes1 site
- Cimoliasaurus magnus1 site
- Coelacanthiformes1 site
- Congorhynchus1 site
- Cretalamna appendiculata1 site
- Crocodyliformes1 site
- Dollochelys1 site
- Enchodus ferox1 site
- Enchodus gladiolus1 site
- Enchodus petrosus1 site
- Eostriatolamia holmdelensis1 site
- Gastropoda1 site
- Hadrosauridae1 site
- Heterodontus1 site
- Hoploparia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Dryptosauridae, 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- Dinosaurs from the Santonian–Campanian Atlantic coastline substantiate phylogenetic signatures of vicariance in Cretaceous North America2
- Vertebrate Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the Late Cretaceous Holmdel Park Site, Monmouth County, New Jersey1
- The Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction event in the North Atlantic coastal plain1
Each of the 4 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 Dryptosauridae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Mgiganteus1 Tony Cairns ★Kumiko★ Traumador the Tyrannosaur Laika ac
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dryptosauridae 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 itCarnosauria through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1890