Gronausaurus wegneri

Brancasaurus is a genus of plesiosaur that lived during the Berriasian stage of the Early Cretaceous period in what is now Germany. The only known species is B. brancai, first described in 1914 from a relatively complete fossil skeleton discovered four years earlier near Gronau, North Rhine-Westphalia. The scientific name of the taxon honours the German paleontologist Wilhelm von Branca. The holotype skeleton represents the most complete Early Cretaceous plesiosaur specimen known from Europe. Another, more fragmentary skeleton of the same taxon was assigned to the newly erected genus Gronausaurus in 2013, before being recognized as a junior synonym of Brancasaurus in a revision published three years later. Additional specimens assigned or potentially referable to Brancasaurus have been recovered from the type locality and from Lower Saxony, some of which had previously been referred to the genus Plesiosaurus by Ernst Koken.

Gronausaurus wegneri

Theodor Wegner (1880-1934) · 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
GronausaurusPBDB
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 2.1 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 139.1 Mya and 137.05 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEarly Cretaceous139–139 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences139–139 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences139–139 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences139–139 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences139–139 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences139–139 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences139–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–138 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences138–137 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences139.6 Mya136.55 Mya

1 occurrence of Gronausaurus wegneri on record, most of them in the Early 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

1 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

Bückeberg — 52.26°N, 7.03°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Gronausaurus wegneri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Gronausaurus wegneri and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Gronausaurus wegneri and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

22 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Gronausaurus wegneri, 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

1 reference

Each 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Gronausaurus wegneri

Credit
Theodor Wegner (1880-1934)
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gronausaurus wegneri 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 itGronausaurus through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hampe 2013