Placerias
Placerias is an extinct genus of dicynodonts that lived during the Carnian and Norian stages of the Triassic period. Placerias belongs to a clade of dicynodonts called Kannemeyeriiformes, which was the last known group of dicynodonts before the taxon became extinct at the end of the Triassic.

Park Ranger · Public Domain · 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
- PlaceriinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 32 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 237 Mya and 205.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Placerias on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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
13 occurrences- Late Triassic100%
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
- Chinle Formation11
- Pekin Formation · Chatham Group2
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The named rock units Placerias has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Placerias and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Placerias and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
74 taxa- Calyptosuchus wellesi9 sites
- Anaschisma browni7 sites
- Leptosuchus5 sites
- Smilosuchus adamanensis5 sites
- Aetosauria4 sites
- Apachesaurus gregorii4 sites
- Archosauria3 sites
- Arganodus3 sites
- Phytosauria3 sites
- Postosuchus kirkpatricki3 sites
- Redfieldiidae3 sites
- Vancleavea campi3 sites
- Acaenasuchus geoffreyi2 sites
- Krzyzanowskisaurus hunti2 sites
- Lonchidion humblei2 sites
- Tecovasuchus2 sites
- Triodus moorei2 sites
- ? Turseodidae indet.1 site
- Acallosuchus rectori1 site
- Acrodus1 site
- Archosauriformes1 site
- Australosomus1 site
- Camposaurus arizonensis1 site
- Ceratodus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Placerias, 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
7 references- Late Triassic (Carnian and Norian) Tetrapods from the Southwestern United States7
- Vertebrate fossil preservation in blue paleosols from the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, with implications for vertebrate biostratigraphy in the Chinle Formation1
- Skull of the dicynodont Placerias from the Upper Triassic of Arizona1
- The oldest Late Triassic footprint assemblage from North America (Pekin Formation, Deep River basin, North Carolina, USA)1
- A dicynodont from the Upper Triassic of New Mexico and its biochronological significance1
- Triassic dicynodont reptiles. Part 11
- A new batrachian and a new reptile from the Trias of Arizona1
Each of the 13 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Placerias
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Park Ranger
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Placerias hesternus · UCMP:V:32460
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, “Placerias”
- 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 itPlaceriinae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lucas 1904