Tuarangisaurus keyesi

Connor Ashbridge · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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- Sits inside
- TuarangisaurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Plesiosauria
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Plesiosauria
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Tuarangisaurus keyesi 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
5 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
- Tahora Formation · Mata Group4
- Lefipán Formation1
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The named rock units Tuarangisaurus keyesi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Tuarangisaurus keyesi and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Tuarangisaurus keyesi and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
23 taxa- Elasmosauridae3 sites
- Australopristis wiffeni1 site
- Ceratosauria1 site
- Dinosauria1 site
- Dryosauridae1 site
- Elasmobranchii1 site
- Gigantocapulus problematicus1 site
- Homolodromia novaezelandica1 site
- Isselicrinus mangahouangaensis1 site
- Mosasauridae1 site
- Nodosauridae1 site
- Ostrea1 site
- Plesiosauria1 site
- Plesiosauria indet.1 site
- Protostegidae1 site
- Pterodactyloidea1 site
- Pterosauria1 site
- Rikisaurus tehoensis1 site
- Sauropoda1 site
- Teleostei1 site
- Theropoda1 site
- Titanosauria1 site
- Torynomma planata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Tuarangisaurus keyesi, 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
3 references- Late Cretaceous reptiles (families Elasmosauridae and Pliosauridae) from the Mangahouanga Stream, North Island, New Zealand3
- The first record of Tuarangisaurus (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria) from the Maastrichtian of the Lefipán Formation, Chubut, Argentina1
- A juvenile Tuarangisaurus keyesi Wiffen and Moisley 1986 (Plesiosauria, Elasmosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of New Zealand, with remarks on its skull ontogeny1
Each of the 5 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 Tuarangisaurus keyesi
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Connor Ashbridge
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tuarangisaurus keyesi 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itTuarangisaurus through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wiffen and Moisley 1986