Olcostephanus

Searched as Olcostephanus nicklesi thieuloyi. The Paleobiology Database treats Olcostephanus as the accepted name.

Olcostephanus is an extinct ammonoid cephalopod genus belonging to the family Olcostephanidae. These fast-moving nektonic carnivores lived during the Cretaceous, from the upper Valanginian to the lower Hauterivian age.

Olcostephanus

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
OlcostephaninaePBDB
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 most 4.5 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 137.05 Mya and 132.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 4 of 4 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous137–137 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences137–137 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences137–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–136 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences136–135 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences135–135 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences135–135 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences135–135 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences135–135 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences135–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences134–133 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences133–133 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences133–133 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences133–133 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences133–133 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences133–132 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences137.6 Mya132.1 Mya

4 occurrences of Olcostephanus 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

4 occurrences

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

2 formations

Ladce — 49.03°N, 18.28°EMraznica — 49.03°N, 18.28°E

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The named rock units Olcostephanus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Olcostephanus and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Olcostephanus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

400 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 484 sites for Olcostephanus, and this reads 240 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

1 reference

Each of the 4 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 content1

Picture of Olcostephanus

Credit
Hectonichus
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Olcostephanus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itOlcostephaninae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Neumayr 1875)