Enhydritherium terraenovae
Enhydritherium terraenovae is an extinct marine otter endemic to North America that lived during the Miocene through Pliocene epochs from ~9.1–4.9 Ma. (AEO), existing for approximately 4.2 million years.

PrimalMustelid · 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
- EnhydritheriumPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Mustelidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Mustelidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 20 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 3.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Enhydritherium terraenovae 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
13 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
- Peace River Formation · Hawthorn Group5
- Etchegoin Formation2
- Alachua Formation1
- Bone Valley Formation · Hawthorn Group1
- San Mateo Formation1
- Juchipila Formation1
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The named rock units Enhydritherium terraenovae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Enhydritherium terraenovae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Enhydritherium terraenovae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
135 taxa- Cormohipparion emsliei6 sites
- Neohipparion eurystyle6 sites
- Nannippus aztecus5 sites
- Floridameryx floridanus4 sites
- Hexameryx simpsoni4 sites
- Testudines4 sites
- Borophagus pugnator3 sites
- Dinohippus mexicanus3 sites
- Felis rexroadensis3 sites
- Megantereon hesperus3 sites
- Pseudhipparion simpsoni3 sites
- Tapirus polkensis3 sites
- Tayassuidae3 sites
- Antilocapridae2 sites
- Aphelops mutilus2 sites
- Ardea polkensis2 sites
- Borophagus hilli2 sites
- Borophagus orc2 sites
- Calippus maccartyi2 sites
- Caretta2 sites
- Corystosiren varguezi2 sites
- Desmathyus brachydontus2 sites
- Eretmochelys2 sites
- Goniodelphis hudsoni2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Enhydritherium terraenovae, 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
4 references- A new sea otter (Carnivora: Mustelidae) from the late Miocene and early Pliocene (Hemphillian) of North America8
- Miocene and Pliocene marine mammal faunas from the Bone Valley Formation of central Florida3
- Discovery of the fossil otter Enhydritherium terraenovae (Carnivora, Mammalia) in Mexico reconciles a palaeozoogeographic mystery1
- Megantereon hesperus from the late Hemphillian of Florida with remarks on the phylogenetic relationships of machairodonts (Mammalia, Felidae, Machairodontinae)1
Each of the 13 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 Enhydritherium terraenovae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- PrimalMustelid
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Enhydritherium terraenovae 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.
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 itEnhydritherium through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Berta and Morgan 1985