Bisonalveus

Bisonalveus is an extinct genus of placental mammals from family Pentacodontidae, that lived during the middle to late Paleocene. Bisonalveus fossils have been discovered in the upper Great Plains region of North America, including sites in modern-day Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, and Alberta.

Bisonalveus

Fox, M. · 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
PentacodontidaePBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Theria
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 3.4 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 60.9 Mya and 57.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Paleocene — about 14 of 14 occurrencesPaleocene61–61 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences61–61 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences61–61 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences61–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–58 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences58–57 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences61.4 Mya57 Mya

14 occurrences of Bisonalveus on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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

14 occurrences

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

4 formations

Paskapoo — 51.90°N, 113.30°WPaskapoo — 53.23°N, 114.70°WPaskapoo — 52.40°N, 113.80°WPaskapoo — 51.18°N, 114.43°WPaskapoo — 51.50°N, 112.30°WPaskapoo — 52.35°N, 113.77°WFort Union — 47.80°N, 106.10°WFort Union — 44.72°N, 108.38°WFort Union — 45.10°N, 106.90°WSlope — 46.70°N, 101.80°WSentinel Butte — 47.20°N, 101.90°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Bisonalveus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Bisonalveus and its relatives

Paleocene

Where Bisonalveus and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.

Found in the same rock

227 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Bisonalveus, 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

9 references

Each of the 14 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 Bisonalveus

Credit
Fox, M.
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Bisonalveus 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

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 itPentacodontidae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gazin 1956