Saniwa ensidens

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- SaniwaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Saniwa
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Saniwa
Time the record covers
At least 5.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 51.1 Mya to 45.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 37.71 Mya.
32 occurrences of Saniwa ensidens on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
32 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
10 formations
- Bridger Formation14
- Friars Formation · La Jolla Group4
- Uinta Formation4
- Green River Formation2
- Sespe Formation2
- San Jose Formation2
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The named rock units Saniwa ensidens has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Saniwa ensidens and its relatives
EoceneWhere Saniwa ensidens and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
362 taxa- Glyptosaurinae6 sites
- Boavus occidentalis5 sites
- Herpetotherium knighti5 sites
- Hyrachyus modestus5 sites
- Iguanidae5 sites
- Parasauromalus olseni5 sites
- Trionychidae5 sites
- Antiacodon pygmaeus4 sites
- Chisternon undatum4 sites
- Crypholestes vaughni4 sites
- Glyptosaurus sylvestris4 sites
- Lacertilia4 sites
- Peradectes californicus4 sites
- Sciuravus powayensis4 sites
- Viverravus minutus4 sites
- Washakius insignis4 sites
- Aethomylos simplicidens3 sites
- Anguidae3 sites
- Anosteira ornata3 sites
- Anura3 sites
- Baena arenosa3 sites
- Baptemys wyomingensis3 sites
- Crocodylus affinis3 sites
- Glyptosaurus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Saniwa ensidens, 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
11 references- Fossil lizards of North America11
- Summary of known occurrences of terrestrial vertebrates from Eocene strata of southern California5
- Preliminary description of new Tertiary reptiles. Part I and Part II5
- The anatomy of the fossil varanid lizard Saniwa ensidens Leidy, 1870, based on a newly discovered complete skeleton2
- Basin margins, biodiversity, evolutionary innovation, and the origin of new taxa2
- Fossil Squamata from the San José Formation, Early Eocene, San Juan Basin, New Mexico2
- Body size estimation from isolated fossil bones reveals deep time evolutionary trends in North American lizards1
- Eocene vertebrates, coprolites, and plants in the Golden Valley Formation of western North Dakota1
- Amphibians and Reptiles (in: The Geology and Paleontology of the Elk Mountain and Tabernacle Butte area, Wyoming)1
- New snakes and lizards from the Eocene of California1
- Part I. Contributions to the extinct vertebrate fauna of the western territories1
Each of the 32 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 Saniwa ensidens
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Saniwa ensidens 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itSaniwa through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leidy 1870