Osteopilus
Osteopilus is a genus of frogs in the family Hylidae. These species have a bony co-ossification on the skull resulting in a casque, hence its name ‘bone-cap’, from osteo- (‘bone’) and the Greek pilos. Color varies between uniform brown, brown-gray, or olive with darker markings or marbled with greens, grays or brown, making a distinct pattern. The finger disks are round; the fingers with a reduced webbing; eyes and tympanum are large. Their natural range includes the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, but O. septentrionalis has also been introduced to the Lesser Antilles, Hawaii and Florida, USA.

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · 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
- HylinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Osteopilus on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene67%
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.
Osteopilus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Osteopilus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
112 taxa- Anolis9 sites
- Geocapromys7 sites
- Leiocephalus7 sites
- Cyclura6 sites
- Macrotus waterhousii6 sites
- Chiroptera5 sites
- Cubophis vudii4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Ameiva3 sites
- Anolis sagrei3 sites
- Chilabothrus3 sites
- Coereba flaveola3 sites
- Eleutherodactylus planirostris3 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus3 sites
- Erophylla sezekorni3 sites
- Mimus gundlachii3 sites
- Psittacus leucocephalus3 sites
- Sphaerodactylus3 sites
- Alsophis cantherigerus2 sites
- Anolis conspersus2 sites
- Aristelliger2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Capromys2 sites
- Corvus nasicus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Osteopilus, 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
5 references- Holocene vertebrates from a dry cave on Eleuthera Island, Commonwealth of The Bahamas4
- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas3
- Late Quaternary fossil vertebrates from the Cayman Islands2
- Living and late Holocene fossil vertebrates and the vegetation of the Cockpit Country, Jamaica1
- Fossil Amphibians and Reptiles from New Providence Island, Bahamas1
Each of the 11 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 content3
Picture of Osteopilus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0 de
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Osteopilus septentrionalis · UF:Herp:63656
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Brian Trepanier
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Osteopilus”
- 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 itHylinae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fitzinger 1843