Kosmoceratidae
Kosmoceratidae is an extinct ammonite family from the Callovian to Early Cretaceous.

Hectonichus · CC BY-SA 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
- PerisphinctoideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda
Time the record covers
At least 28 million years on record.
The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 137.05 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 132.6 Mya.
158 occurrences of Kosmoceratidae on record, most of them in the Middle 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
158 occurrences- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassic94%
- Late Jurassic6%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
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
22 formations
- Chinitna Formation21
- "Sengenthal" Formation12
- Staffin Shale Formation · Great Estuarine Group10
- Marnes jaunes Formation5
- Tuxedni Formation4
- Smithers Formation · Hazelton Group3
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The named rock units Kosmoceratidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 70 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Kosmoceratidae and its relatives
Middle JurassicWhere Kosmoceratidae and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
437 taxa- Kosmoceras29 sites
- Choffatia20 sites
- Hecticoceras16 sites
- Kepplerites15 sites
- Kosmoceras spinosum15 sites
- Zugokosmoceras jason13 sites
- Lunuloceras9 sites
- Macrocephalites9 sites
- Reineckeia9 sites
- Ammonites coronatum8 sites
- Orbignyceras pseudopunctatum8 sites
- Pleurocephalites8 sites
- Brightia salvadori7 sites
- Peltoceras (Peltoceras) athleta7 sites
- Bonarellia bicostata6 sites
- Campylites secula6 sites
- Erymnoceras doliforme6 sites
- Indosphinctes6 sites
- Kamptokephalites6 sites
- Kepplerites (Seymourites) tychonis6 sites
- Lunuloceras lunuloides6 sites
- Orbignyceras paulowi6 sites
- Peltoceras6 sites
- Putealiceras6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 109 sites for Kosmoceratidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
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
24 references- Stratigraphie und Palaeontologie des oolithischen Eisenerzlagers von Herznach und seiner Umgebung35
- La succession des faunes dans le Callovien Francais, essais de corrélation à l'échelle de la zone31
- Callovian (Jurassic) ammonites from the United States and Alaska Part 2. Alaska Peninsula and Cook Inlet regions23
- Zur Stratigraphie des Mittel- und unteren Oberjuras in Sengenthal bei Neumarkt /Opf. (Fränkische Alb) [On the stratigraphy of the Middle and early Upper Jurassic at Sengenthal, near Neumarkt/Opf. (Franconian Alb)]15
- The Oxford Clay of Skye, Scalpay and Eigg12
- A U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar time scale for the Jurassic5
- Upper Jurassic Reefs from the Russian Western Caucasus: Implications for the Eastern Black Sea4
- La série callovienne du Nord-Ouest du bassin d'Aquitaine4
- Stratigraphy and composition of the Mesozoic deposits in central Vestspitsbergen4
- Jurassic (Bathonian or Early Callovian) Ammonites from Alaska and Montana4
- El Jurásico de Cerritos Bayos [The Jurassic of Cerritos Bayos]4
- A new species of the genus Cadoceras (Ammonoidea) from the Callovian of the Unzha River3
Each of the 158 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. 12 further references are not listed. 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 Kosmoceratidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hectonichus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Kosmoceratidae 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 itPerisphinctoidea through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Haug 1887