Beatragus
Beatragus is a genus of alcelaphine antelope. The hirola (Beatragus hunteri) is the only living representative, and three extinct species are known, all from Africa.

Uncredited · 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
- hirolaPBDB
- Sits inside
- AlcelaphiniPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Bovidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Bovidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At least 780 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
23 occurrences of Beatragus 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
23 occurrences- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene84%
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
5 formations
- Koobi Fora Formation9
- Matabaietu Formation · Awash Group4
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group4
- Shungura Formation · Omo Group1
- 2 Formation1
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The named rock units Beatragus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Beatragus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Beatragus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
262 taxa- Tragelaphus strepsiceros13 sites
- Adenota recki12 sites
- Gazella12 sites
- Alcelaphini11 sites
- Equus11 sites
- Hipparion9 sites
- Kolpochoerus limnetes9 sites
- Metridiochoerus andrewsi9 sites
- Connochaetes gentryi8 sites
- Hominidae8 sites
- Kobus sigmoidalis8 sites
- Palaeoloxodon recki8 sites
- Reduncini8 sites
- Aepyceros melampus7 sites
- Bovidae7 sites
- Ceratotherium simum7 sites
- Giraffa7 sites
- Homo7 sites
- Libytherium maurusium7 sites
- Metridiochoerus7 sites
- Aves6 sites
- Connochaetes6 sites
- Gazella praethomsoni6 sites
- Gerontochoerus scotti6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Beatragus, 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
12 references- Family Bovidae9
- New antelope fossils from Awash, Ethiopia, and phylogenetic analysis of Hippotragini (Bovidae, Mammalia)4
- Plio-Pleistocene terrestrial mammal assemblage from Konso, Southern Ethiopia1
- Environment and Behavior of 2.5-Million-Year-Old Bouri Hominids1
- New fossils of Alcelaphini and Caprinae (Bovidae: Mammalia) from Awash, Ethiopia, and phylogenetic analysis of Alcelaphini1
- The Swartkrans Palaeontological Research Project in perspective: results and conclusions1
- Swartkrans: A Cave's Chronicle of Early Man1
- Palaeoecology of the Pliocene and lower Pleistocene hominids of southern Africa: how good is the chronological and paleoenvironmental evidence?1
- Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates in the Lower Pleistocene of the Republic of Djibouti1
- Extinct large Colobines from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa1
- Re-interpretation of the Swartkrans site and its remains1
- Quaternary vertebrate fossil sites in the south-western Cape Province1
Each of the 23 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 Beatragus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Beatragus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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, “Beatragus”
- 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 itAlcelaphini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Heller 1912