Pleurodonta

Pleurodonta is one of the two subdivisions of Iguania, the other being Acrodonta. Pleurodonta includes all families previously split from Iguanidae sensu lato, whereas Acrodonta includes Agamidae and Chamaeleonidae. The name Pleurodonta was first used by paleontologist and herpetologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1864, although he used it in a different sense than it is used today. Because of this difference, the name Iguanoidea has been proposed as a replacement for Pleurodonta in phylogenetic nomenclature.

Pleurodonta

Marcel Burkhard/ Cele4 , www.tierlexikon.ch · 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
IguanomorphaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At least 431 million years on record.

The record covers at least 431.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 433.5 Mya to 0 Mya.

Silurian — about 23 of 451 occurrencesDevonian — about 15 of 451 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 451 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 451 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 451 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 451 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 17 of 451 occurrencesPaleocene — about 4 of 451 occurrencesEocene — about 112 of 451 occurrencesOligocene — about 17 of 451 occurrencesMiocene — about 50 of 451 occurrencesPliocene — about 15 of 451 occurrencesPleistocene — about 144 of 451 occurrences442–427 Mya — about 3 occurrences427–413 Mya — about 21 occurrences413–398 Mya — about 4 occurrences398–383 Mya — about 7 occurrences383–368 Mya — about 3 occurrences118–103 Mya — about 1 occurrence88–74 Mya — about 11 occurrences74–59 Mya — about 10 occurrences59–44 Mya — about 53 occurrences44–29 Mya — about 68 occurrences29–15 Mya — about 41 occurrences15–0 Mya — about 229 occurrences431.2 Mya11.7 ka442 Mya0 Mya

451 occurrences of Pleurodonta on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

451 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

88 formations

Friars — 32.90°N, 117.10°WChadron — 46.10°N, 103.30°WArikaree — 43.20°N, 108.20°WWasatch — 42.37°N, 108.91°WWasatch — 41.80°N, 110.70°WWasatch — 41.70°N, 109.00°WValentine — 42.78°N, 100.03°WValentine — 42.80°N, 100.80°WValentine — 42.81°N, 100.05°WValentine — 42.49°N, 98.11°WAlamosa — 37.37°N, 105.75°WMarcellus — 42.99°N, 76.04°WWillwood — 43.95°N, 107.57°WWillwood — 44.50°N, 108.00°WPalm Springs — 32.97°N, 116.13°WPozary — 49.93°N, 14.18°EPozary — 50.08°N, 14.47°EPozary — 50.00°N, 14.35°E"unnamed sandstone" — 33.90°N, 117.00°WPerrière — 44.37°N, 1.73°EPerrière — 44.38°N, 1.43°EBrule — 40.74°N, 103.19°WBrule — 42.40°N, 103.80°WBrule — 42.76°N, 105.38°WBrule — 42.90°N, 105.20°WWind River — 43.13°N, 104.07°WWind River — 43.20°N, 107.10°WRunningwater — 42.49°N, 102.96°WRunningwater — 42.37°N, 103.32°WRunningwater — 41.70°N, 103.10°WBaruungoyot — 43.49°N, 101.13°EBaruungoyot — 43.30°N, 99.60°EBaruungoyot — 43.25°N, 99.75°EFluminimaggiore — 39.32°N, 8.65°EGreen River — 40.20°N, 109.90°WGreen River — 41.67°N, 110.67°WCrooked Creek — 37.20°N, 100.30°WTienen — 50.82°N, 5.10°ERexroad — 37.20°N, 100.30°WBridger — 41.20°N, 110.50°WBridger — 41.29°N, 110.55°WBridger — 41.50°N, 110.60°WSanta Cruz — 50.35°S, 68.95°WPerriere — 44.35°N, 1.73°E

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The named rock units Pleurodonta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 64 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 232 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pleurodonta and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Pleurodonta and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

3,518 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 273 sites for Pleurodonta, 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

182 references

Each of the 451 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. 170 further references are not listed. 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 content1

Picture of Pleurodonta

Credit
Marcel Burkhard/ Cele4 , www.tierlexikon.ch
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pleurodonta 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 itIguanomorpha through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cope 1864)