Allodesmus
Allodesmus is an extinct genus of pinniped from the middle to late Miocene of California and Japan that belongs to the extinct pinniped family Desmatophocidae.

Jonathan Chen · 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
- AllodesminaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pinnipedimorpha
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pinnipedia
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
42 occurrences of Allodesmus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
42 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
19 formations
- Aoki Formation10
- Temblor Formation5
- Bessho Formation5
- Monterey Formation4
- Tsurushi Formation2
- Montesano Formation2
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The named rock units Allodesmus 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.
Allodesmus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Allodesmus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
260 taxa- Cetacea7 sites
- Otodus megalodon7 sites
- Carcharhinus6 sites
- Cetotheriidae6 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis5 sites
- Cosmopolitodus planus5 sites
- Desmostylus5 sites
- Balaenomorpha4 sites
- Desmostylia4 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus4 sites
- Myliobatis4 sites
- Mysticeti4 sites
- Neotherium4 sites
- Otariidae4 sites
- Puffinus4 sites
- Delphinidae3 sites
- Delphinoidea3 sites
- Diomedea3 sites
- Galeocerdo3 sites
- Hemipristis serra3 sites
- Isurus3 sites
- Liolithax kernensis3 sites
- Negaprion3 sites
- Odobenidae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 34 sites for Allodesmus, 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
20 references- Outline of fossil marine mammals from the Middle Miocene Bessho and Aoki Formations, Nagano Prefecture, Japan12
- Miocene pinnipeds of the otariid subfamily Allodesminae in the North Pacific Ocean: Systematics and relationships4
- Middle and late Miocene marine mammal assemblages from the Monterey Formation of Orange County, California3
- The last of the desmatophocid seals: a new species of Allodesmus from the upper Miocene of Washington, USA, and a revision of the taxonomy of Desmatophocidae3
- Miocene pinniped Allodesmus (Mammalia: Carnivora); with special reference to the "Mito seal" from Ibaraki Prefecture, Central Japan3
- The sequence of fossil marine mammal assemblages in Mexico2
- A review of Lophocetus and Liolithax and their relationships to the delphinoid family Kentriodontidae (Cetacea: Odontoceti)2
- A new Miocene pinniped Allodesmus (Mammalia: Carnivora) from Hokkaido, northern Japan1
- New data on the early odobenid Neotherium mirum Kellogg, 1931, and other pinniped remains from the Sharktooth Hill Bonebed, California1
- Miocene Otariid (Allodesminae) scapula from Haraichi Formation, Tomioka Group, Gunma, Japan1
- Summary of the fossil record of pinnipeds of Japan, and comparisons with that from the eastern North Pacific1
- Middle Miocene marine birds from the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, Orange County, California1
Each of the 42 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. 8 further references are 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 Allodesmus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Allodesmus 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, “Allodesmus”
- 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 itAllodesminae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kellogg 1922