Thalassodromeus sethi

Thalassodromeus is a genus of pterosaur that lived in what is now Brazil during the Early Cretaceous period, about a hundred million years ago. The original skull, discovered in 1983 in the Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil, was collected in several pieces. In 2002, the skull was made the holotype specimen of Thalassodromeus sethi by palaeontologists Alexander Kellner and Diogenes de Almeida Campos. The generic name means "sea runner", and the specific name refers to the Egyptian god Seth due to its crest being supposedly reminiscent of Seth's crown. Other scholars have pointed out that the crest was instead similar to the crown of Amon. A jaw tip was assigned to T. sethi in 2005, became the basis of the new genus Banguela in 2015, and assigned back to Thalassodromeus as the species T. oberlii in 2018, though other researchers consider it a valid genus. Another species was described in 2015 based on a supposed crest fragment, but this was later shown to be part of a turtle shell.

Thalassodromeus sethi

Kabacchi · CC BY 2.0 · 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
ThalassodromeusPBDB
Diet
piscivorePBDB, for Pterosauria
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Pterosauria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Pterosauria

Time the record covers

At most 6.4 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 119.57 Mya and 113.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEarly Cretaceous120–119 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences119–119 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences119–119 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences119–119 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences119–118 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences118–118 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences118–118 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences118–118 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences118–117 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences117–117 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences117–117 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences117–117 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences117–116 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences116–116 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences116–116 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences116–116 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences116–115 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences115–115 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences115–115 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences115–115 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences115–114 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences114–114 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences114–114 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences114–114 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences114–113 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences113–113 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences120.1 Mya112.7 Mya

1 occurrence of Thalassodromeus sethi on record, most of them in the Early 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

1 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

1 formation

Romualdo — 7.18°S, 39.73°W

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The named rock units Thalassodromeus sethi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Thalassodromeus sethi and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Thalassodromeus sethi and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

16 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Thalassodromeus sethi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 Thalassodromeus sethi

Credit
Kabacchi
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thalassodromeus sethi 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 itThalassodromeus through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kellner and Campos 2002