Callospermophilus lateralis
The golden-mantled ground squirrel is a ground squirrel native to western North America. It is distributed in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, and through much of the western United States.

Eborutta at German Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- golden-mantled ground squirrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- CallospermophilusPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Sciuridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 81 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.
6 occurrences of Callospermophilus lateralis 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
6 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.
Found in
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Callospermophilus lateralis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Callospermophilus lateralis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Callospermophilus lateralis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
170 taxa- Lemmiscus curtatus4 sites
- Neotoma cinerea4 sites
- Thomomys4 sites
- Vulpes vulpes4 sites
- Canis latrans3 sites
- Cynomys3 sites
- Mustela erminea3 sites
- Neogale frenata3 sites
- Tamiasciurus hudsonicus3 sites
- Allophaiomys2 sites
- Chiroptera2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Lepus americanus2 sites
- Lepus californicus2 sites
- Lynx2 sites
- Martes americana2 sites
- Mephitis mephitis2 sites
- Microtus californicus2 sites
- Microtus meadensis2 sites
- Microtus paroperarius2 sites
- Mictomys kansasensis2 sites
- Mictomys meltoni2 sites
- Mustela nigripes2 sites
- Neotoma2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Callospermophilus lateralis, 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
5 references- Geologic history, stratigraphy, and paleontology of SAM Cave, north-central New Mexico2
- Sciurid rodents from Porcupine Cave, Park Co., Colorado: Irvingtonian diversity and faunal dynamics1
- Mid-Wisconsinan vertebrates and their environment from January Cave, Alberta, Canada1
- Middle Pleistocene (late Irvingtonian: Nebraskan) climatic changes in south-central Colorado1
- The exploration of Potter Creek Cave1
Each of the 6 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 Callospermophilus lateralis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Eborutta at German Wikipedia
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Callospermophilus lateralis 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 itCallospermophilus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Say 1823)