Tylosaurus nepaeolicus

Fort Hays Sternberg Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- TylosaurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Mosasauridae
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 89.8 Mya and 83.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Tylosaurus nepaeolicus 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
3 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
- Niobrara Formation · Colorado Group2
- Boquillas Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Tylosaurus nepaeolicus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Tylosaurus nepaeolicus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Tylosaurus nepaeolicus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
22 taxa- Cimolichthys nepaholica1 site
- Cretalamna appendiculata1 site
- Cretoxyrhina mantelli1 site
- Enchodus gladiolus1 site
- Enchodus petrosus1 site
- Gillicus arcuatus1 site
- Ichthyodectes ctenodon1 site
- Martinichthys brevis1 site
- Pachyrhizodus caninus1 site
- Pachyrhizodus minimus1 site
- Platecarpus planifrons1 site
- Protosphyraena nitida1 site
- Protosphyraena perniciosa1 site
- Ptychodus anonymus1 site
- Ptychodus martini1 site
- Ptychodus mortoni1 site
- Ptychodus polygyrus1 site
- Saurodon leanus1 site
- Squalicorax falcatus1 site
- Thryptodus zittelli1 site
- Tylosaurus kansasensis1 site
- Xiphactinus audax1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Tylosaurus nepaeolicus, 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 mosasauroids (Reptilia, Squamata) of the Big bend region in Texas, USA1
- An associated dentition and calcified vertebral centra of the Late Cretaceous elasmobranch, Ptychodus anonymus Williston 19001
- Review of the Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Period found west of the Mississippi River1
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. 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 content3

Picture of Tylosaurus nepaeolicus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Fort Hays Sternberg Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Tylosaurus nepaeolicus · FHSM:vp:2209
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Pomona Pictures
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itTylosaurus through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cope 1874)