Tseajaia campi
Tseajaia is an extinct genus of diadectomorph tetrapod from the Early Permian of western North America. The skeleton is that of a medium-sized, rather advanced reptile-like animal. In life it was about 1 metre (3 ft) long and may have looked vaguely like an iguana. The dentition was somewhat blunt, indicating herbivory or possibly omnivory. It contains a single known species, Tseajaia campi.

Uncredited · 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
- TseajaiaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At most 25 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 298.9 Mya and 274.4 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Tseajaia campi on record, most of them in the Permian. 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
2 occurrences- Permian100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Tseajaia campi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Tseajaia campi and its relatives
PermianWhere Tseajaia campi and its relatives were recorded in the Permian.
Found in the same rock
10 taxa- Actinopterygii1 site
- Ctenospondylus casei1 site
- Diadectes1 site
- Ecolsonia cutlerensis1 site
- Eryops1 site
- Ophiacodon1 site
- Sphenacodon ferocior1 site
- Stegotretus agyrus1 site
- Zarcasaurus tanyderus1 site
- Zatracheidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Tseajaia campi, 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
2 references- Early Permian Vertebrate Assemblage and its Biostratigraphic Significance, Arroyo del Agua, Rio Arriba County, New Mexico1
- Vertebrates from the Organ Rock Shale of the Cutler Group, Permian of Monument Valley and vicinity, Utah and Arizona1
Each of the 2 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 Tseajaia campi
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Tseajaia campi 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Tseajaia”
- 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 itTseajaia through timeFormations of the PermianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vaughn 1964