Cephalogale

Cephalogale is an extinct genus of hemicyonine bear which lived in the Oligocene and Early Miocene epochs in North America and Europe. It lived from around 28.4—20.0 Mya. Before it was reconsidered to be close to the ancestry of hemicyonines, Cephalogale was once considered to be an ancestor of all bears.

Cephalogale

Nobu Tamura · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
Sits inside
CephalogaliniPBDB
Diet
herbivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ursidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Ursidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At least 8.8 million years on record.

The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 16.3 Mya.

Eocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesOligocene — about 6 of 16 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 10 of 16 occurrencesMiocene34–34 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences33–33 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences33–32 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences32–31 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences31–31 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences31–30 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences30–29 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences29–29 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences29–28 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences28–28 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences24–23 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences23–23 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences21–21 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 1 occurrence18–17 Mya — about 1 occurrence17–16 Mya — about 1 occurrence16–16 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences27.3 Mya18.5 Mya34.4 Mya15.8 Mya

16 occurrences of Cephalogale on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

16 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

5 formations

Runningwater — 41.70°N, 103.10°WRunningwater — 42.80°N, 103.10°WRunningwater — 42.70°N, 102.50°WRunningwater — 42.20°N, 103.10°WMarsland — 42.42°N, 103.87°WZia Sand — 35.70°N, 107.00°WWildcat Hills Beds — 41.70°N, 103.67°WWulanbulage — 39.83°N, 108.73°E

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The named rock units Cephalogale has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cephalogale and its relatives

Miocene

Where Cephalogale and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

240 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Cephalogale, 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

10 references

Each of the 16 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 Cephalogale

Credit
Nobu Tamura
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itCephalogalini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Jourdan 1862