Pleurosternon

Pleurosternon is an extinct genus of freshwater pleurosternid turtle from the latest Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous of Europe. Its type species, P. bullockii, was described by the paleontologist Richard Owen in 1853. Since then, and throughout the late 19th century, many fossil turtles were incorrectly assigned to this genus, though only two are currently considered valid.

Pleurosternon

Jos. Dinkel · 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
PleurosternidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida

Time the record covers

At least 57 million years on record.

The record covers at least 143.1 Mya to 85.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 149.2 Mya to 83.6 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 4 of 25 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 21 of 25 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 25 occurrencesLate Cretaceous151–148 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences148–146 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences146–144 Mya — about 2 occurrences144–141 Mya — about 5 occurrences141–139 Mya — about 7 occurrences139–137 Mya — about 6 occurrences137–135 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences135–132 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences132–130 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences130–128 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences128–125 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences125–123 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences123–121 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences87–85 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences85–82 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences143.1 Mya85.7 Mya151 Mya82 Mya

25 occurrences of Pleurosternon on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

25 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

8 formations

Lulworth — 50.60°N, 1.97°WWeald Clay — 52.72°N, 1.44°WWessex — 50.62°N, 1.34°WDurlston — 50.60°N, 1.97°WPortland Stone — 50.57°N, 2.45°WMont-Lambert — 50.77°N, 1.63°ETunbridge Wells Sand — 51.09°N, 0.17°WMatute — 41.87°N, 1.91°W

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The named rock units Pleurosternon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pleurosternon and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Pleurosternon and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

239 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Pleurosternon, 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

17 references

Each of the 25 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. 5 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 Pleurosternon

Credit
Jos. Dinkel
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pleurosternon 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 itPleurosternidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1853