Harpacochampsa camfieldensis
Harpacochampsa is a poorly known Early Miocene crocodilian from the Bullock Creek lagerstätte of the Northern Territory, Australia. The current specimen consists of a partial skull and fragments of a long, slender snout reminiscent of that of a false gharial, demonstrating that it was a piscivore in life.

Mark Marathon · 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
- HarpacochampsaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Crocodylia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At most 4.4 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 15.98 Mya and 11.63 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Harpacochampsa camfieldensis on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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- Miocene100%
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 Harpacochampsa camfieldensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Harpacochampsa camfieldensis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Harpacochampsa camfieldensis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
No other named taxon is catalogued from that site.
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Harpacochampsa camfieldensis, 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Harpacochampsa camfieldensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mark Marathon
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Harpacochampsa camfieldensis 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 itHarpacochampsa through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Megirian et al. 1991