Gopherus agassizii

The desert tortoise is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and to the Sinaloan thornscrub of northwestern Mexico. G. agassizii is distributed in western Arizona, southeastern California, southern Nevada, and southwestern Utah. The specific name agassizii is in honor of Swiss-American zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. The desert tortoise is the official state reptile in California and Nevada.

Gopherus agassizii

Tigerhawkvok · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
Mojave desert tortoisePBDB
Sits inside
GopherusPBDB
Diet
herbivore, herbivorePBDB, for Testudinidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Testudinidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Testudinidae

Time the record covers

At least 81 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 210 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Pleistocene — about 6 of 6 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 6 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.3–1.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–1.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.0–950 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences950 ka–887 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences887 ka–823 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences823 ka–760 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences760 ka–697 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences697 ka–633 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences633 ka–570 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences570 ka–507 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences507 ka–443 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences443 ka–380 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences380 ka–317 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences317 ka–253 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences253 ka–190 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences190 ka–127 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences127 ka–63 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences63 ka–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences210 ka – 129 ka1.9 Mya0 Mya

6 occurrences of Gopherus agassizii 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

6 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.

Gopherus agassizii and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Gopherus agassizii and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

103 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Gopherus agassizii, 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

Each of the 6 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 Gopherus agassizii

Credit
Tigerhawkvok
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gopherus agassizii 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 itGopherus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cooper 1863)