Cavia aperea
The Brazilian guinea pig is a wild guinea pig species found in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Petra Karstedt (= PetraK ; www.Tiermotive.de) · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · 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
- Brazilian guinea pigPBDB
- Sits inside
- CaviaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Caviidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Caviidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 3.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5 Mya to 0 Mya.
8 occurrences of Cavia aperea on record. 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
8 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Cavia aperea 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.
Found in the same rock
149 taxa- Chaetophractus villosus3 sites
- Ctenomys3 sites
- Dicolpomys fossor3 sites
- Ozotoceros bezoarticus3 sites
- Clyomys riograndensis2 sites
- Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris2 sites
- Lama guanicoe2 sites
- Myocastor coypus2 sites
- Phyllomys2 sites
- Reithrodon auritus2 sites
- Thylamys pusillus2 sites
- Zaedyus pichiy2 sites
- Actenomys priscus1 site
- Alitoxodon vetustus1 site
- Alouatta1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anura1 site
- Argyrolagus palmeri1 site
- Blastocerus dichotomus1 site
- Boa1 site
- Bothrops1 site
- Callopistes1 site
- Calomys1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Cavia aperea, 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
6 references- Late Cenozoic vertebrates from the Southern Pampean region: systematic and bio-chronostratigraphic update2
- Caviomorphs (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the Holocene of Río Grande do Sul state Brazil: Systematics and paleoenvironmental context2
- Occurrence of Dicolpomys (Echimyidae) in the late Holocene of Argentina: The most recently extinct South American caviomorph genus1
- Late Cenozoic mammal bio-chronostratigraphy in southwestern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina1
- Los vertebrados del Pleistoceno tardío del arroyo Napostá Grande, provincia de Buenos Aires. Aspectos paleoambientales1
- Piacaguera: Um Sambaqui do Litoral do Estado de Sao Paulo, Brasil1
Each of the 8 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 Cavia aperea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Petra Karstedt (= PetraK ; www.Tiermotive.de)
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0 de
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cavia aperea 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 itCavia through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Erxleben 1777