Habrosaurus
Habrosaurus, meaning "graceful lizard", is an extinct genus of prehistoric salamanders, and the oldest and largest known member of the family Sirenidae. Two species are known, H. prodilatus from the middle Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, and H. dilatus from the late Maastrichtian and Paleocene of western North America. It is relatively common in the Lance Formation of Wyoming, and less common in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana.

Sauriazoicillus · 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
- SirenidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At least 20 million years on record.
The record covers at least 83.6 Mya to 63.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 85.7 Mya to 60.9 Mya.
70 occurrences of Habrosaurus 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
70 occurrences- Late Cretaceous83%
- Paleocene17%
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
15 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group28
- Lance Formation15
- Fort Union Formation7
- Ferris Formation5
- Iron Springs Formation2
- Judith River Formation · Montana Group1
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The named rock units Habrosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Habrosaurus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Habrosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
662 taxa- Scapherpeton tectum35 sites
- Opisthotriton kayi32 sites
- Lepisosteus occidentalis26 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus26 sites
- Trionychidae26 sites
- Brachychampsa montana24 sites
- Champsosaurus23 sites
- Cimolodon nitidus22 sites
- Borealosuchus sternbergii21 sites
- Lonchidion selachos21 sites
- Paronychodon21 sites
- Prodesmodon copei20 sites
- Baenidae19 sites
- Meniscoessus robustus19 sites
- Odaxosaurus piger19 sites
- Belonostomus longirostris18 sites
- Cyclurus fragosus18 sites
- Anura17 sites
- Theropoda17 sites
- Compsemys victa16 sites
- Didelphodon vorax16 sites
- Ceratopsidae15 sites
- Mesodma thompsoni15 sites
- Teleostei15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 67 sites for Habrosaurus, 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
24 references- Mesozoic and Palaeocene lissamphibian assemblages of North America: a comprehensive review15
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections9
- Fossil vertebrates from the Late Cretaceous Lance Formation, eastern Wyoming9
- Vertebrate faunal changes through Lancian and Puercan time in southern Wyoming5
- Non-dinosaurian lower vertebrates across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in northeastern Montana5
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota4
- Preliminary report on salamanders (Lissamphibia; Caudata) from the Late Cretaceous (late Cenomanian–late Campanian of southern Utah, U.S.A.3
- Revision of Habrosaurus Gilmore (Caudata; Sirenidae) and relationships among sirenid salamanders3
- Comparative taphonomy and paleoecological reconstruction of two microvertebrate accumulations from the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation (Maastrichtian), eastern Montana2
- The paleontology, geology and taphonomy of the Tooth Draw Deposit; Hell Creek Formation (Maastrictian), Butte County, South Dakota1
- Vertebrates of the Iron Springs Formation, Upper Cretaceous, southwestern Utah1
- A preliminary report on Late Cretaceous herptiles within or near Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah1
Each of the 70 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. 12 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 content2
Picture of Habrosaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Sauriazoicillus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Habrosaurus dilatus · UCM:Paleontology:UCM:FossilVert:43428
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, “Habrosaurus”
- 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 itSirenidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gilmore 1928