Atherurus macrourus
The Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine is a species of rodent in the family Hystricidae. It is found in Cambodia, China, Bhutan, India, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

tontantravel · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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- Also called
- Asiatic brush-tailed porcupinePBDB
- Sits inside
- AtherurusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, frugivorePBDB, for Hystricidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Hystricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Atherurus macrourus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Atherurus macrourus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Atherurus macrourus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
115 taxa- Capricornis sumatraensis4 sites
- Sus scrofa4 sites
- Ursus thibetanus4 sites
- Bovinae3 sites
- Cervus unicolor3 sites
- Muntiacus muntjak3 sites
- Panthera tigris3 sites
- Ursus malayanus3 sites
- Ailuropoda melanoleuca2 sites
- Arctonyx collaris2 sites
- Belomys2 sites
- Chiropodomys2 sites
- Cuon2 sites
- Felis2 sites
- Hapalomys2 sites
- Hystrix2 sites
- Leopoldamys2 sites
- Macaca2 sites
- Microchiroptera2 sites
- Muridae2 sites
- Mus2 sites
- Niviventer2 sites
- Pongo2 sites
- Rhinoceros sinensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Atherurus macrourus, 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
3 references- First discovery of Pleistocene orangutan (Pongo sp.) fossils in Peninsular Malaysia: Biogeographic and paleoenvironmental implications2
- Huanglong Cave: A Late Pleistocene human fossil site in Hubei Province, China1
- Geochronology of Ailuropoda–Stegodon fauna and Gigantopithecus in Guangxi Province, southern China1
Each of the 4 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. 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 Atherurus macrourus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- tontantravel
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Atherurus macrourus 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 itAtherurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)