Didymictis protenus

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- DidymictisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Viverravidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Didymictis
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 9.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 57.5 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
132 occurrences of Didymictis protenus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
132 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
6 formations
- Willwood Formation92
- Fort Union Formation4
- Wasatch Formation2
- Lower Variegated Sequence Formation1
- San Jose Formation1
- Wind River Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Didymictis protenus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 31 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Didymictis protenus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Didymictis protenus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
322 taxa- Ectocion osbornianus59 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus54 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius52 sites
- Homogalax protapirinus50 sites
- Esthonyx bisulcatus45 sites
- Viverravus acutus44 sites
- Arenahippus pernix42 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani40 sites
- Coryphodon34 sites
- Bunophorus etsagicus30 sites
- Cantius abditus30 sites
- Allognathosuchus29 sites
- Thryptacodon antiquus26 sites
- Coryphodon eocaenus22 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus21 sites
- Hyopsodus loomisi21 sites
- Lacertilia21 sites
- Vulpavus australis21 sites
- Arenahippus aemulor20 sites
- Sifrhippus grangeri20 sites
- Cardiolophus radinskyi19 sites
- Lepisosteus19 sites
- Cantius mckennai18 sites
- Rodentia18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 132 sites for Didymictis protenus, 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
9 references- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary46
- Ancestry and Species Definition in Paleontology: A Stratocladistic Analysis of Paleocene-Eocene Viverravidae (Mammalia, Carnivora) from Wyoming41
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary37
- Stratigraphy, mammalian paleontology, paleoecology, and age correlation of the Wasatch Formation, Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming2
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals2
- New fossils from the early Eocene Four Mile Area and improved relative dating of vertebrate localities1
- Distribution and stratigraphic correlation of upper Paleocene and lower Eocene fossil mammal and plant localities of the Fort Union, Willwood, and Tatman formations, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming1
- Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary vertebrate paleontological reconnaissance, Togwotee Pass area, northwestern Wyoming1
- The mammalian fauna of the Lysite Member, Wind River Formation (early Eocene) of Wyoming1
Each of the 132 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 Didymictis protenus
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Didymictis protenus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itDidymictis through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cope 1874)