Apidium
Searched as Apidium pygmaeum. The Paleobiology Database treats Apidium as the accepted name.
The genus Apidium is that of at least three extinct primates living in the early Oligocene, from 30 to 28 million years ago. Apidium fossils are common in the Fayoum deposits of Egypt. Fossils of the earlier species, Apidium moustafai, are rare; fossils of the later species Apidium phiomense are fairly common.

Susan B. Hochgraf, Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · 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
- QatraniinaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Primates
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Primates
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 8.1 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 458 Mya and 449.9 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Apidium on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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
1 occurrences- Ordovician100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Apidium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Apidium and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Apidium and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
158 taxa- Thyrohyrax domorictus4 sites
- Hyainailourinae3 sites
- Metaphiomys schaubi3 sites
- Aegyptopithecus zeuxis2 sites
- Amphilichas2 sites
- Bivalvia2 sites
- Bothriogenys fraasi2 sites
- Contexta binata2 sites
- Eokosovopeltis romanovskii2 sites
- Gastropoda2 sites
- Girvanella2 sites
- Illaenus2 sites
- Mastopora2 sites
- Megalohyrax eocaenus2 sites
- Mesotaphraspis2 sites
- Metaphiomys2 sites
- Monamys simonsi2 sites
- Neophiomys paraphiomyoides2 sites
- Pachyhyrax crassidentatus2 sites
- Palaelodus2 sites
- Peratherium africanus2 sites
- Phiomys andrewsi2 sites
- Pliomerina2 sites
- Propliopithecus haeckeli2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Apidium, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 Apidium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Susan B. Hochgraf, Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Apidium 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, “Apidium”
- 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 itQatraniinae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Osborn 1908