Ischigualastia
Ischigualastia is an extinct genus of large dicynodont therapsids from the Late Triassic (Carnian) Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina. The type species and only known species, I. jenseni, was named in 1962 by C. Barry Cox, who wrote a more detailed description three years later. The species name honours James Jensen, who prepared some of the earliest fossils. There are some reports of Ischigualastia remains outside of Argentina, though these do not hold up to scrutiny.

Kentaro Ohno · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- StahleckeriinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Dicynodontia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 6.3 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 233.6 Mya and 227.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Ischigualastia on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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- Late Triassic100%
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 Ischigualastia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ischigualastia and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Ischigualastia and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
8 taxa- Aetosauroides1 site
- Cynodontia1 site
- Diegocanis elegans1 site
- Eoraptor lunensis1 site
- Exaeretodon1 site
- Exaeretodon argentinus1 site
- Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis1 site
- Saurosuchus galilei1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Ischigualastia, 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- Primitive dinosaur skeleton from Argentina and the early evolution of Dinosauria1
- Preliminary diagnosis of Ischigualastia, a new genus of dicynodont from Argentina.1
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 Ischigualastia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Kentaro Ohno
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ischigualastia 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 itStahleckeriinae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cox 1962