Shinisauria

Shinisauria is a clade or evolutionary grouping of anguimorph lizards that includes the living Chinese crocodile lizard Shinisaurus and several of its closest extinct relatives. Shinisauria was named in 2008 by Jack Lee Conrad as a stem-based taxon to include all anguimorphs more closely related to Shinisaurus than to Anguis fragilis, Heloderma suspectum or Varanus varius. Several recent phylogenetic analyses of lizard evolutionary relationships place Shinisauria in a basal position within the clade Platynota, which also includes monitor lizards, helodermatids, and the extinct mosasaurs. Shinisaurians were once thought to be closely related to the genus Xenosaurus, but they are now considered distant relatives within Anguimorpha. The fossil record of shinisaurians extends back to the Early Cretaceous with Dalinghosaurus, which is from the Aptian aged Yixian Formation of China. Two other extinct shinisaurians are currently known: Bahndwivici from the Eocene of Wyoming and Merkurosaurus from the Late Oligocene of Germany and the Early Miocene of the Czech Republic. An indeterminate shinisaurian is known from an isolated tail found in the Eocene aged Messel pit in Germany.

Shinisauria

Wilfried Berns, Aufgenommen mit einer Nikon Coolpix 5700 · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · 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
PlatynotaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At least 17 million years on record.

The record covers at least 39.7 Mya to 22.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 45.9 Mya to 20 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 3 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 3 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 1 of 3 occurrencesMiocene46–46 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences46–45 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences45–44 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences44–43 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences41–40 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences40–39 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences24–23 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences39.7 Mya22.4 Mya46.4 Mya19.5 Mya

3 occurrences of Shinisauria on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

3 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

2 formations

Wiesbaden — 50.04°N, 8.27°EGreen River — 39.53°N, 107.95°W

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The named rock units Shinisauria 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.

Shinisauria and its relatives

Eocene

Where Shinisauria and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

52 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Shinisauria, 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

3 references

Each of the 3 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Shinisauria

Credit
Wilfried Berns, Aufgenommen mit einer Nikon Coolpix 5700
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0 de
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Shinisauria 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 itPlatynota through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Conrad 2008