Najash rionegrina
Najash is an extinct genus of basal snake from the Early Cretaceous (Albian) Candeleros Formation of Patagonia. Like a number of other Cretaceous and living snakes it retained hindlimbs, but Najash is unusual in having well-developed legs that extend outside the rib cage, and a pelvis connected to the spine.

Paleoninja · 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
- NajashPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 3.1 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 113.2 Mya and 110.1 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Najash rionegrina 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
- Candeleros Formation · Neuquén Group1
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The named rock units Najash rionegrina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Najash rionegrina and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Najash rionegrina and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Alnashetri cerropoliciensis1 site
- Araripesuchus buitreraensis1 site
- Araripesuchus manzanensis1 site
- Buitreraptor gonzalezorum1 site
- Cronopio dentiacutus1 site
- Kaikaifilusaurus calvoi1 site
- Pterosauria1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Najash rionegrina, 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 Najash rionegrina
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Paleoninja
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Najash rionegrina 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, “Najash”
- 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 itNajash through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Apestiguía and Zaher 2006