Eurysternidae

Eurysternidae is an extinct family of turtles in the clade Thalassochelydia. It consists of several genera of marine turtles from marine deposits in Europe, including Achelonia, Chelonides, Eurysternum. Hydropelta, Chelonides, Idiochelys, Palaeomedusa, Parachelys. and Solnhofia.

Eurysternidae

FunkMonk · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
ThalassochelydiaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida

Time the record covers

At least 135 million years on record.

The record covers at least 152.21 Mya to 16.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 15.98 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 19 of 21 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 21 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 21 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 21 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 21 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 21 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 21 occurrences158–153 Mya — about 2 occurrences153–148 Mya — about 16 occurrences148–143 Mya — about 1 occurrence143–138 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–95 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences95–90 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–13 Mya — about 1 occurrence152.21 Mya16.9 Mya158 Mya13 Mya

21 occurrences of Eurysternidae 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

21 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

7 formations

Painten — 48.92°N, 11.58°EPainten — 49.02°N, 11.98°EReuchenette — 47.42°N, 7.02°EReuchenette — 47.42°N, 7.07°ERegensburger Grünsandstein — 48.90°N, 11.93°ELiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°EMiocene Lower Continental Complex — 41.44°N, 2.00°ESüntel — 52.29°N, 8.71°ESolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°E

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The named rock units Eurysternidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Eurysternidae and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Eurysternidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

191 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Eurysternidae, 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

16 references

Each of the 21 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. 4 further references are not listed. 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 Eurysternidae

Credit
FunkMonk
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Eurysternidae 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 itThalassochelydia through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Dollo 1886