Toxochelys

Toxochelys is an extinct genus of marine turtle from the Late Cretaceous period. It is the most commonly found fossilized turtle species in the Smoky Hill Chalk, in western Kansas.

Toxochelys

Ed T from Houston, TX, USofA · CC BY-SA 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
DurocryptodiraPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
Life habit
aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Cryptodira

Time the record covers

At least 67 million years on record.

The record covers at least 83.6 Mya to 16.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 9.4 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 32 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 30 of 32 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 32 occurrencesMiocene102–99 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences96–93 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences93–90 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences90–87 Mya — about 1 occurrence87–83 Mya — about 6 occurrences83–80 Mya — about 6 occurrences80–77 Mya — about 6 occurrences77–74 Mya — about 6 occurrences74–71 Mya — about 4 occurrences71–68 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences68–64 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences17–14 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences14–11 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences11–7.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences83.6 Mya16.3 Mya102 Mya8 Mya

32 occurrences of Toxochelys 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

32 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

12 formations

Mooreville Chalk — 32.84°N, 87.89°WMooreville Chalk — 32.32°N, 86.46°WMooreville Chalk — 32.60°N, 87.68°WMooreville Chalk — 32.96°N, 88.13°WMooreville Chalk — 32.87°N, 88.04°WMooreville Chalk — 32.76°N, 88.02°WMooreville Chalk — 32.92°N, 88.07°WMooreville Chalk — 32.96°N, 88.19°WPierre Shale — 49.14°N, 98.22°WPierre Shale — 49.29°N, 98.30°WPierre Shale — 49.22°N, 98.20°WNiobrara — 38.82°N, 100.18°WNiobrara — 38.80°N, 96.60°WNiobrara — 38.79°N, 100.76°WNiobrara — 38.80°N, 100.87°WMerchantville — 39.54°N, 75.73°WRipley — 35.23°N, 88.61°WMarlbrook Marl — 34.10°N, 93.15°WPierre Shale — 43.58°N, 103.20°WMocuio — 14.27°S, 12.38°ELoop Fork — 42.70°N, 102.50°WCoachman — 34.24°N, 79.84°WDonoho Creek — 34.06°N, 79.53°WDemopolis Chalk — 32.67°N, 88.11°W

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The named rock units Toxochelys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Toxochelys and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

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

Found in the same rock

320 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 32 sites for Toxochelys, 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

16 references

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. 4 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 content1

Picture of Toxochelys

Credit
Ed T from Houston, TX, USofA
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Toxochelys 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 itDurocryptodira through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1873