Cercartetus lepidus

Heath Warwick · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- Tasmanian pygmy possumPBDB
- Sits inside
- CercartetusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Burramyidae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Burramyidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Cercartetus lepidus 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene99%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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.
Cercartetus lepidus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cercartetus lepidus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
154 taxa- Mastacomys10 sites
- Pseudomys10 sites
- Antechinus flavipes9 sites
- Cercartetus nanus9 sites
- Rattus9 sites
- Bettongia lesueur8 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus8 sites
- Isoodon obesulus8 sites
- Petaurus breviceps8 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus8 sites
- Conilurus7 sites
- Notomys7 sites
- Perameles gunnii7 sites
- Phascogale tapoatafa7 sites
- Potorous platyops7 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata7 sites
- Sminthopsis murina7 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula7 sites
- Acrobates pygmaeus6 sites
- Macropus rufogriseus6 sites
- Sminthopsis6 sites
- Bettongia5 sites
- Egernia5 sites
- Lagorchestes5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Cercartetus lepidus, 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 Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area3
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia3
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II2
- Analysis of a late Quaternary deposit and small mammal fauna from Nettle Cave, Jenolan, New South Wales1
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia1
- Broom Cave Cercartetus; with observations on Pygmy Possum dental morphology, variation, and taxonomy1
Each of the 11 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 Cercartetus lepidus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Heath Warwick
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cercartetus lepidus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCercartetus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thomas 1888