Xinjiangchelys
Xinjiangchelys is an extinct genus of xinjiangchelyid turtle known from the Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous of China and Kyrgyzstan. It is known from over 11 different species.

Márton Rabi, Chang-Fu Zhou, Oliver Wings, Sun Ge and Walter G Joyce · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- XinjiangchelyidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Cryptodira
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Cryptodira
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Cryptodira
Time the record covers
At least 46 million years on record.
The record covers at least 168.2 Mya to 121.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 170.9 Mya to 100.5 Mya.
20 occurrences of Xinjiangchelys on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
20 occurrencesThese 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
8 formations
- Shishugou Formation7
- Lianmuqin Formation · Tugulu Group3
- Balabansai Formation2
- Qigu Formation2
- Shaximiao Formation · Chongqing Group2
- Chuanjie Formation1
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The named rock units Xinjiangchelys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Xinjiangchelys and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Xinjiangchelys and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
94 taxa- Noripterus complicidens3 sites
- Sunosuchus3 sites
- Camarasauridae2 sites
- Chengyuchelys latimarginalis2 sites
- Docodonta2 sites
- Edentosuchus tienshanensis2 sites
- Ferganobatrachus riabinini2 sites
- Ferganoceratodus jurassicus2 sites
- Ornithopoda2 sites
- Plantae2 sites
- Sauropoda2 sites
- Tashkumyrodon desideratus2 sites
- Temnospondyli2 sites
- Tetanurae2 sites
- Wuerhosaurus homheni2 sites
- Xinjiangchelyidae2 sites
- Actinopterygii1 site
- Allosauroidea1 site
- Amphilestidae1 site
- Amphitheriidae1 site
- Analong chuanjieensis1 site
- Ankylosauria1 site
- Annemys1 site
- Bivalvia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Xinjiangchelys, 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
13 references- Turtles from the Jurassic Shishugou Formation of the Junggar Basin, People's Republic of China, with comments on the basicranial region of basal eucryptodires6
- A new xinjiangchelyid turtle (Testudines, Eucryptodira) from the Jurassic Qigu Formation of the southern Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, North-West China2
- [Chelonia fossils from Wuerho]2
- A revision of Xinjiangchelys oshanensis (Ye, 1973), and new material from the Middle Jurassic of Lufeng, Yunnan Province, China1
- The turtle Xinjiangchelys radiplicatoides BRINKMAN et al., 2013 (Reptilia: Testudines) from the Lower Qigu Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Liuhuanggou, Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China1
- The small theropod dinosaurs Tugulusaurus and Phaedrolosaurus from the Early Cretaceous of Xinjiang, China1
- A new Shachemydinae (Chelonii, Cryptodira) from the Lower Cretaceous of Laos: preliminary data1
- On some Mesozoic turtles of the Fergana Depression (Kyrgyzstan) and Dzhungar Alatau Ridge (Kazakhstan)1
- New material of Xinjiangchelys (Reptilia: Testudines) from the Late Jurassic Qigu Formation (Shishugou Group) of the Pingfengshan locality, Junggar Basin, Xinjiang1
- [A Jurassic turtle from Junggar, Xinjiang1
- [New material of Plesiochelys radiplicatus with preliminary discussion of related problems]1
- Data on late Mesozoic turtles from the USSR1
Each of the 20 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. 1 further reference is 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 Xinjiangchelys
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Márton Rabi, Chang-Fu Zhou, Oliver Wings, Sun Ge and Walter G Joyce
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Xinjiangchelys 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 itXinjiangchelyidae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Yeh 1986