Dicrostonyx torquatus
The Arctic lemming is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae.

Imperatorskaia akademīia nauk (Russia); Middendorff, A. Th. von · Public Domain · 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
- Arctic lemmingPBDB
- Sits inside
- DicrostonyxPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
11 occurrences of Dicrostonyx torquatus 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- Pleistocene82%
- Holocene18%
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.
Dicrostonyx torquatus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Dicrostonyx torquatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
150 taxa- Citellus4 sites
- Arvicola terrestris3 sites
- Bison3 sites
- Mammuthus primigenius3 sites
- Microtus3 sites
- Microtus arvalis3 sites
- Ochotona3 sites
- Rangifer tarandus3 sites
- Vulpes vulpes3 sites
- Allocricetus bursae correzensis2 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus2 sites
- Canis lupus2 sites
- Cervus elaphus2 sites
- Coelodonta antiquitatis2 sites
- Eliomys quercinus2 sites
- Equus caballus2 sites
- Lagopus2 sites
- Lemmus2 sites
- Lemmus lemmus2 sites
- Lemmus sibiricus2 sites
- Lepus2 sites
- Microtus gregalis martelensis2 sites
- Microtus malei noaillensis2 sites
- Microtus oeconomus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Dicrostonyx torquatus, 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
8 references- Ice Age Vertebrates in the Canadian Arctic Islands2
- Les rongeurs de l'Aven I des Abimes de la Fage a Noailles (Correze)2
- Säugetierfunde und Pleistozänstratigraphie in der Kolyma-Niederung (Pleistocene stratigraphy from the Kolyma fluvial plain and it's mammal fossils)2
- Thule Subsistence and Optimal Diet: A Zooarchaeological Test of a Linear Programming Model1
- Mid-Wisconsinan vertebrates and their environment from January Cave, Alberta, Canada1
- Interglacial remains of caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and lemming (Dicrostonyx torquatus (?)) from North Greenland1
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary1
- A fossil record of the porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) from the Great Plains1
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 Dicrostonyx torquatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Imperatorskaia akademīia nauk (Russia); Middendorff, A. Th. von
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dicrostonyx torquatus 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 itDicrostonyx through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pallas 1778)