Scaphiopus

Clinton & Charles Robertson from Texas, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikidata/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- Also called
- spadefoot toadPBDB
- Sits inside
- PelobatidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37 Mya to 0 Mya.
30 occurrences of Scaphiopus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
30 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
9 formations
- Valentine Formation · Ogallala Group4
- Wicomico Formation2
- Bidahochi Formation1
- Runningwater Formation1
- Ogallala Formation1
- Kingsdown Formation1
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The named rock units Scaphiopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Scaphiopus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Scaphiopus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,087 taxa- Rana19 sites
- Hyla13 sites
- Bufo11 sites
- Terrapene carolina10 sites
- Thamnophis10 sites
- Eumeces9 sites
- Ambystoma tigrinum8 sites
- Bufo woodhousei8 sites
- Cryptotis parva8 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus8 sites
- Rana pipiens8 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus8 sites
- Colaptes auratus7 sites
- Dasypus bellus7 sites
- Elaphe7 sites
- Equus7 sites
- Lynx rufus7 sites
- Pituophis melanoleucus7 sites
- Sceloporus7 sites
- Amblystoma6 sites
- Crotalus6 sites
- Crotalus adamanteus6 sites
- Falco sparverius6 sites
- Gastrophryne carolinensis6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Scaphiopus, 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
27 references- Frogs in Hemphillian deposits of Nebraska, with the description of a new species of Bufo3
- A Pleistocene herpetofauna from Eddy County, New Mexico2
- Amphibians and reptiles of the late Hemphillian White Cone local fauna, Navajo County, Arizona1
- Reconstruction of mid Wisconsinan environments in southern New Mexico1
- Herpetofauna of the Egelhoff site (Miocene: Barstovian) of north-central Nebraska1
- The Hottell Ranch rhino quarries (basal Ogallala: medial Barstovian), Banner County, Nebraska. Part I: Geologic setting, faunal lists, lower vertebrates1
- The Late Wisconsinan vertebrate fauna from Deadman Cave, southern Arizona1
- Fossil Amphibians and reptiles of Nebraska and Kansas1
- A small herpetofauna from the type section of the Valentine Formation (Miocene: Barstovian), Cherry County, Nebraska1
- Mid-Miocene lizards from western Nebraska1
- Herpetofauna of the WaKeeney local fauna (lower Pliocene: Clarendonian) of Trego County, Kansas1
- Herpetofauna of the Mission local fauna (Lower Pliocene) of South Dakota1
Each of the 30 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. 15 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 content2

Picture of Scaphiopus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Clinton & Charles Robertson from Texas, USA
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Scaphiopus holbrookii · UF:Herp:9620
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 itPelobatidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Holbrook 1836