Felis lybica

The African wildcat is a small wildcat species with sandy grey fur, pale vertical stripes on the sides and around the face. It is native to Africa, West and Central Asia, and is distributed to Rajasthan in India and Xinjiang in China. It inhabits a broad variety of landscapes ranging from deserts to savannas, shrublands and grasslands.

Felis lybica

Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
African wildcatPBDB
Sits inside
FelisPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Felidae
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Felidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At least 2.5 million years on record.

The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pliocene — about 1 of 33 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 21 of 33 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 11 of 33 occurrences3.7–3.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.6–3.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.9–2.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences2.5–2.3 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences2.2–2.0 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences2.0–1.9 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.9–1.8 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.8–1.6 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.4–1.2 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences1.1–957 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences957 ka–820 ka Mya — about 1.0 occurrences820 ka–683 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence683 ka–547 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence547 ka–410 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence410 ka–273 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence273 ka–137 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence137 ka–0 Mya — about 14 occurrences2.58 Mya11.7 ka4.1 Mya0 Mya

33 occurrences of Felis lybica 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

33 occurrences

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.

Found in

3 formations

Makapansgat — 24.20°S, 28.95°ENubia — 22.52°N, 30.73°ESwartkrans — 26.02°S, 27.72°E

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The named rock units Felis lybica has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 30 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Felis lybica and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Felis lybica and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

335 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Felis lybica, 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

29 references

Each of the 33 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. 17 further references are not listed. 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 Felis lybica

Credit
Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Felis lybica 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 itFelis through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Forster 1780