Ianthasaurus
Ianthasaurus is an extinct genus of small edaphosaurids from the Late Carboniferous.

Dmitry Bogdanov · CC BY 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
- EdaphosauridaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
- Length
- 75 cmWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.3 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 306 Mya and 303.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Ianthasaurus on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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
2 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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
- Stanton Formation · Lansing Group1
- Sangre de Cristo Formation1
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The named rock units Ianthasaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ianthasaurus and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Ianthasaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
12 taxa- Actiobates peabodyi1 site
- Amniota1 site
- Desmatodon hesperis1 site
- Haptodus garnettensis1 site
- Ianthodon schultzei1 site
- Kenomagnathus scotti1 site
- Limnoscelis dynatis1 site
- Petrolacosaurus kansensis1 site
- Temnospondyli1 site
- Tenuacaptor reiszi1 site
- Trihecaton howardinus1 site
- Xyrospondylus ecordi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Ianthasaurus, 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
2 references- Morphology, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Diadectidae (Cotylosauria: Diadectomorpha)1
- Ianthasaurus hardestii n. sp., a primitive edaphosaur (Reptilia, Pelycosauria) from the Upper Pennsylvanian Rock Lake Shale near Garnett, Kansas1
Each of the 2 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 content1
Picture of Ianthasaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dmitry Bogdanov
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ianthasaurus 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 itEdaphosauridae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Reisz and Berman 1986