Acratocnus
Acratocnus is an extinct genus of Caribbean sloths that were found on Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico during the Late Pleistocene and early-mid Holocene.

H. Gregory McDonald · CC BY 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
- CholoepodinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Megalonychidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Megalonychidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
10 occurrences of Acratocnus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
10 occurrences- Pleistocene94%
- Holocene6%
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.
Acratocnus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acratocnus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
50 taxa- Nesophontes5 sites
- Anolis4 sites
- Celestus3 sites
- Chelonoidis marcanoi3 sites
- Leiocephalus3 sites
- Neocnus gliriformis3 sites
- Plagiodontia aedium3 sites
- Plagiodontia araeum3 sites
- Serpentes3 sites
- Aquila2 sites
- Boromys torrei2 sites
- Capromys2 sites
- Crocodylus2 sites
- Geocapromys columbianus2 sites
- Isolobodon2 sites
- Isolobodon portoricensis2 sites
- Mesocnus torrei2 sites
- Neocnus2 sites
- Ornimegalonyx oteroi2 sites
- Tyto noeli2 sites
- Anura1 site
- Boromys offella1 site
- Canis1 site
- Capromys acevedo1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Acratocnus, 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
6 references- A new species of extinct Late Quaternary giant tortoise from Hispaniola3
- Nueva especie de ave fósil (Strigiformes: Tytonidae) del Pleistoceno superior de Cuba3
- Arcos cigomáticos completos en el perezoso Neocnus del cuaternario tardío de la provincia La Altagracia, República Dominicana1
- The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba1
- New Cretaceous and Cenozoic Decapoda (Crustacea: Thalassinidea, Brachyura) from Puerto Rico, United States Territory1
- Genera and new species of ground sloths from the Pleistocene of Cuba1
Each of the 10 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 Acratocnus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- H. Gregory McDonald
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Acratocnus 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, “Acratocnus”
- 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 itCholoepodinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Anthony 1916