Pterodinium

Pterodinium

via iDigBio · CC BY · via iDigBio. 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
GonyaulacaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Dinoflagellata
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Dinophyceae

Time the record covers

At least 73 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 15.98 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 8 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 7 of 8 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 8 occurrencesMiocene102–99 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences96–93 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences88–85 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences85–82 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences82–79 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences79–76 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences76–73 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences73–70 Mya — about 1 occurrence70–67 Mya — about 1 occurrence67–64 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences23–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–17 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences17–14 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences93.9 Mya20.45 Mya102 Mya14 Mya

8 occurrences of Pterodinium 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

8 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

3 formations

Santa Marta — 63.88°S, 57.96°WAlta Vista — 50.49°S, 72.58°WSnow Hill Island — 64.00°S, 57.51°W

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The named rock units Pterodinium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pterodinium and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Pterodinium and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

129 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Pterodinium, 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

6 references

Each of the 8 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 content1

Picture of Pterodinium

Source
iDigBio
Credit
via iDigBio
Licence
CC BY
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pterodinium 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.

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itGonyaulacaceae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Eisenack 1958