Otosphinctes
Searched as Otosphinctes rota constricta. The Paleobiology Database treats Otosphinctes as the accepted name.

Not Otosphinctes. This is Unio tumidus Philipsson, 1788, a relative.
-919270953 · CC BY 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- PerisphinctinaePBDB
- 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 6.7 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 161.5 Mya and 154.8 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Otosphinctes on record, most of them in the Late 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
1 occurrences- Late 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.
Otosphinctes and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Otosphinctes and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
172 taxa- Perisphinctes (Dichotomosphinctes)10 sites
- Gregoryceras7 sites
- Euaspidoceras6 sites
- Glochiceras subclausum6 sites
- Perisphinctes (Arisphinctes)6 sites
- Perisphinctes (Kranaosphinctes)6 sites
- Perisphinctes5 sites
- Aspidoceras4 sites
- Perisphinctes (Dichotomosphinctes) antecedens4 sites
- Perisphinctes (Dichotomosphinctes) montfalconensis4 sites
- Proscaphites4 sites
- Tornquistes helvetiae4 sites
- Cardioceras (Subvertebriceras) densiplicatum3 sites
- Lithacoceras3 sites
- Mirosphinctes3 sites
- Neoprionoceras henrici3 sites
- Perisphinctes (Arisphinctes) chloroolithicus3 sites
- Protophites christoli3 sites
- Sowerbyceras tortisulcatum3 sites
- Taramelliceras3 sites
- Taramelliceras (Taramelliceras)3 sites
- Aequipecten2 sites
- Belemnites2 sites
- Bryozoa2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Otosphinctes, 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
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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Unio tumidus Philipsson, 1788
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- -919270953
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Otosphinctes 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPerisphinctinae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Buckman 1926)