Pliosaurus andrewsi

Pliosaurus andrewsi is an extinct species of pliosaurid plesiosaurs that lived during the Callovian stage of the Middle Jurassic, in what is now England. The only known fossils of this taxon were discovered in the Peterborough Member of the Oxford Clay Formation. Other attributed specimens have been discovered in various corners of Eurasia, but these are currently seen as indeterminate or coming from other taxa. The taxonomic history of this animal is quite complex, because several of its fossils were attributed to different genera of pliosaurids, before being concretely named and described in 1960 by Lambert Beverly Tarlo as a species of Pliosaurus. However, although the taxon was found to be valid, subsequent revisions found that it is not part of this genus, and therefore a taxonomic revision must be carried out on this species.

Pliosaurus andrewsi

Davide Foffa Mark T. Young Stephen L. Brusatte · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
PliosaurusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Pliosauroidea
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Pliosauroidea
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Pliosauroidea
Environment
marinePBDB, for Pliosauroidea

Time the record covers

At most 11 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 165.3 Mya and 154.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 2 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 1 of 2 occurrencesLate Jurassic165–165 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences165–165 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences165–164 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences164–164 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences164–164 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences164–163 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences163–163 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences163–162 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences162–162 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences162–162 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences162–161 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences161–161 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences161–160 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences160–160 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences160–160 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences160–159 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences159–159 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences159–159 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences159–158 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences158–158 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences158–157 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences157–157 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences157–157 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences157–156 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences156–156 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences156–155 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences155–155 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences155–155 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences165.8 Mya154.3 Mya

2 occurrences of Pliosaurus andrewsi on record, most of them in the Middle 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

2 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

1 formation

Oxford Clay — 52.57°N, 0.23°W

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The named rock units Pliosaurus andrewsi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pliosaurus andrewsi and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Pliosaurus andrewsi and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

29 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Pliosaurus andrewsi, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Pliosaurus andrewsi

Credit
Davide Foffa Mark T. Young Stephen L. Brusatte
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pliosaurus andrewsi 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 itPliosaurus through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Tarlo 1960