Notochampsa
Notochampsa is an extinct genus of protosuchian crocodyliform. Fossils have been found from the lower Clarens Formation of the Karoo Supergroup in South Africa, dating back to the Pliensbachian stage of the Early Jurassic. Notochampsa comes from a period of relative fossil scarcity, and is the youngest known occurrence of a crocodylomorph from the Karoo Basin of South Africa.
No picture of Notochampsa was found. Wikipedia, Wikidata and iDigBio were searched and had none. Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is. GBIF was asked, and what came back is not recorded: nothing, or a picture this site could not tie to Notochampsa, or no answer at all. This entry cannot say which.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- NotochampsidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pseudosuchia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 201.4 Mya and 184.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Notochampsa on record, most of them in the Early 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
3 occurrences- Early Jurassic100%
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
3 formations
- Clarens Formation · Stormberg Group1
- Forest Sandstone Formation1
- Elliot Formation · Stormberg Group1
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The named rock units Notochampsa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Notochampsa and its relatives
Early JurassicWhere Notochampsa and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
1 taxon- Protosuchus haughtoni1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Notochampsa, 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
3 references- Fossils from the Elliot and Clarens Formations (Karoo Sequence) of the northeastern Cape, Orange Free State and Lesotho, and a suggested biozonation based on tetrapods1
- A protosuchid crocodilian from the Forest Sandstone Formation (Upper Karoo) of Zimbabwe1
- The fauna and stratigraphy of the Stormberg Series1
Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content0
No picture of Notochampsa was found. Wikipedia, Wikidata and iDigBio were searched and had none.
Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is.
GBIF was asked, and what came back is not recorded: nothing, or a picture this site could not tie to Notochampsa, or no answer at all. This entry cannot say which.
No 3D scan of Notochampsa 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, “Notochampsa”
- 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 itNotochampsidae through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Broom 1904