Echimys
Echimys is a genus of the spiny rats family, the Echimyidae. Members of this genus are collectively called spiny tree-rats.

Engraved by Barent de Bakker , published by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon · 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- Also called
- spiny tree-ratPBDB
- Sits inside
- EchimyinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Echimyidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Echimyidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Echimys on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene67%
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.
Echimys and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Echimys and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
162 taxa- Coendou prehensilis2 sites
- Cuniculus paca2 sites
- Dasyprocta2 sites
- Heteromys2 sites
- Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris2 sites
- Micronycteris2 sites
- Proechimys2 sites
- Rhogeessa2 sites
- Trachops cirrhosus2 sites
- Accipitridae1 site
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Alouatta seniculus1 site
- Ametrida centurio1 site
- Anas bahamensis1 site
- Anura1 site
- Aramides cajaneus1 site
- Aramus guarauna1 site
- Ardeidae1 site
- Artibeus jamaicensis1 site
- Arundinicola leucocephala1 site
- Asio stygius1 site
- Athene cunicularia1 site
- Bubo1 site
- Burhinus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Echimys, 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
3 references- Imigrantes em um continente perdido: O registro fossilífero de roedores Caviomorpha (Mammalia: Rodentia: Ctenohystrica) do Cenozoico do Brasil1
- Late Pleistocene cingulates (Mammalia: Xenarthra) from Mene de Inciarte tar pits, Sierra de Perijá, western Venezuela1
- Density, Productivity, and Distribution of Mammals in Two Venezuelan Habitats1
Each of the 3 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 Echimys
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Engraved by Barent de Bakker , published by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Echimys 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Echimys”
- 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 itEchimyinae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cuvier 1809