Prismatoolithidae
Prismatoolithidae is an oofamily of fossil eggs. They may have been laid by ornithopods or theropods.

Jonathan Chen · 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
- OrnithischiaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
Time the record covers
At least 80 million years on record.
The record covers at least 152.21 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 66 Mya.
101 occurrences of Prismatoolithidae on record, most of them in the Late 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
101 occurrencesThese 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
34 formations
- Djadokhta Formation9
- Conques Formation · Tremp Group9
- Baruungoyot Formation8
- Morrison Formation7
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group6
- North Horn Formation6
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Prismatoolithidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Prismatoolithidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Prismatoolithidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
408 taxa- Theropoda16 sites
- Prismatoolithus14 sites
- Crocodyliformes11 sites
- Dinosauria11 sites
- Prismatoolithus trempii10 sites
- Continuoolithus canadensis9 sites
- Crocodylia9 sites
- Prismatoolithus levis9 sites
- Prismatoolithus tenuis9 sites
- Dromaeosauridae8 sites
- Hadrosauridae8 sites
- Lacertilia8 sites
- Ornithopoda8 sites
- Testudines8 sites
- Ankylosauria7 sites
- Anura7 sites
- Preprismatoolithus coloradensis7 sites
- Coelurosauria6 sites
- Krokolithes6 sites
- Mammalia6 sites
- Protoceratopsidovum minimum6 sites
- Teleostei6 sites
- Elongatoolithidae5 sites
- Hadrosauroidea5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 88 sites for Prismatoolithidae, 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
50 references- Diversity of theropod ootaxa and its implications for the latest Cretaceous dinosaur turnover in southwestern Europe11
- Theropod and protoceratopsian dinosaur eggs from the Cretaceous of Mongolia and Kazakhstan11
- Dinosaur eggshells from the Late Cretaceous of Laeguedoc (southern France)8
- An egg clutch of Prismatooiitlbus levis oosp. nov. from the Oldman Formation (Upper Cretaceous) Devil's Coulee, southern Alberta6
- Upper Jurassic eggshells from the Western Interior of North America5
- Description and review of non-avian dinosaur eggs from Cretaceous deposits of the Mongolian Gobi Desert4
- Eggs and eggshell from the Upper Cretaceous North Horn Formation, central Utah4
- A new peculiar dinosaur egg, Sankofa pyrenaica oogen. nov. oosp. nov. from the Upper Cretaceous coastal deposits of the Aren Formation, South-Central Pyrenees, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain2
- Fossil eggs and eggshell from the lowermost Two Medicine Formation of western Montana, Sevenmile Hill locality2
- A troodontid nest in the North Horn Formation, central Utah2
- Les oeufs de dinosaures du Crétacé supérieur du bassin de Villeveyrac-Mèze (Hérault, France): description d'une nouvelle ooespèce de Prismatoolithus [New Prismatoolithus oospecies and other Upper Cretaceous dinosaur eggs from the Villeveyrac-Mèze Basin (Hérault, France)]2
- Eggshell sites from the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition in south-central Pyrenees (Spain)2
Each of the 101 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. 38 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 Prismatoolithidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itOrnithischia through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hirsch 1994