Olympidytes

Olympidytes is an extinct genus of Plotopteridae, a family of large, flightless marine bird superficially similar to modern penguins but more closely related to cormorants and gannets. It lived during the Late Eocene or the Early Oligocene, in what is today the State of Washington and Japan.

Olympidytes

Gerald Mayr, James L. Goedert, Vanesa L. de Pietri, R. Paul Scofield. Photographs by Sven Tränkner. Modifications mad… · CC BY 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
TonsalinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
Life habit
ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Plotopteridae

Time the record covers

At most 14 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 41.03 Mya and 27.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesOligocene41–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences41–40 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences40–40 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences40–39 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences39–39 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences39–38 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences38–38 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–32 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences32–32 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences32–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–30 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences30–30 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences30–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–28 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–28 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences41.5 Mya26.8 Mya

2 occurrences of Olympidytes on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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

2 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

1 formation

Kakinoura — 32.99°N, 129.64°E

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The named rock units Olympidytes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Olympidytes and its relatives

Oligocene

Where Olympidytes and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.

Found in the same rock

1 taxon

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Olympidytes, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Olympidytes

Credit
Gerald Mayr, James L. Goedert, Vanesa L. de Pietri, R. Paul Scofield. Photographs by Sven Tränkner. Modifications mad…
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Olympidytes 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 itTonsalinae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Mayr and Goedert 2016