Heterodontosaurus tucki
via GBIF · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- HeterodontosaurusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Heterodontosaurus
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Heterodontosaurus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Heterodontosaurus
Time the record covers
At most 8.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 201.4 Mya and 192.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Heterodontosaurus tucki on record, most of them in the Early 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
4 occurrences- Early Jurassic100%
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
2 formations
- Elliot Formation · Stormberg Group3
- Clarens Formation · Stormberg Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Heterodontosaurus tucki has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Heterodontosaurus tucki and its relatives
Early JurassicWhere Heterodontosaurus tucki and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
5 taxa- Heterodontosauridae1 site
- Lesothosaurus diagnosticus1 site
- Massospondylus carinatus1 site
- Neotheropoda1 site
- Pegomastax africanus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Heterodontosaurus tucki, 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
4 references- Limb bone histology of theropod dinosaurs from the Early Jurassic of South Africa1
- New heterodontosaurid specimens from the Lower Jurassic of southern Africa and the early ornithischian dinosaur radiation1
- Fossils from the Elliot and Clarens Formations (Karoo Sequence) of the northeastern Cape, Orange Free State and Lesotho, and a suggested biozonation based on tetrapods1
- A new ornithischian from the Upper Triassic of South Africa1
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 content2
Picture of Heterodontosaurus tucki
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- via GBIF
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Heterodontosaurus tucki · amnh:farb:2400
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHeterodontosaurus through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Crompton and Charig 1962)