Jucha squalea
Jucha is an extinct genus of plesiosaur found in the Hauterivian Klimovka Formation of Russia. The type species, J. squalea, was one of the basalmost and oldest definitive elasmosaurs known to date.

Connor Ashbridge · 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
- JuchaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Time the record covers
At most 6.9 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 132.6 Mya and 125.77 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Jucha squalea on record, most of them in the Early 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
1 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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 Jucha squalea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Jucha squalea and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Jucha squalea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2 taxa- Khetella1 site
- Simbirskites (Speetoniceras)1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Jucha squalea, 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
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 Jucha squalea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Connor Ashbridge
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Jucha squalea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Jucha”
- 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 itJucha through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fischer et al. 2020