Helaletes
Helaletes is a genus of an extinct perissodactyls closely related to tapirs. Fossils have been found in North America.

Uncredited · CC0 · 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
- TapiroideaPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Tapiroidea
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Tapiroidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 5.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 51.1 Mya to 45.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 37.71 Mya.
32 occurrences of Helaletes 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
32 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
11 formations
- Bridger Formation12
- Huerfano Formation3
- Wasatch Formation2
- Wind River Formation2
- Aycross Formation2
- "Sheep Pass" Formation1
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The named rock units Helaletes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Helaletes and its relatives
EoceneWhere Helaletes and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
326 taxa- Omomys carteri9 sites
- Antiacodon pygmaeus8 sites
- Hyopsodus paulus8 sites
- Hyopsodus minusculus7 sites
- Notharctus robinsoni7 sites
- Orohippus7 sites
- Hyrachyus6 sites
- Hyrachyus modestus6 sites
- Microsyops elegans6 sites
- Microsyops scottianus6 sites
- Palaeosyops fontinalis6 sites
- Smilodectes mcgrewi6 sites
- Glyptosaurus sylvestris5 sites
- Hyopsodus5 sites
- Sciuravus nitidus5 sites
- Viverravus gracilis5 sites
- Viverravus minutus5 sites
- Viverravus sicarius5 sites
- Anaptomorphus westi4 sites
- Apatemys bellulus4 sites
- Boverisuchus vorax4 sites
- Herpetotherium innominatum4 sites
- Hyrachyus eximius4 sites
- Miacis parvivorus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Helaletes, 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
21 references- Mammalian Fauna From the Lower Bridger Formation (Bridger A, Early Middle Eocene) of the Southern Green River Basin, Wyoming6
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals3
- Fossil Mammalia of the Huerfano Formation, Eocene, of Colorado3
- Basin margins, biodiversity, evolutionary innovation, and the origin of new taxa2
- Revision of the Wind River faunas, early Eocene of central Wyoming. Part 5. Geology and biostratigraphy of the upper part of the Wind River Formation, northeastern Wind River Basin2
- Mammalian fauna of the Middle Eoene Kishenehn Formation, Middle Fork of the Flathead River, Montana1
- Records of Tapiroidea Gray, 1825 (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) from Kazakhstan – An overview1
- A new basal Carnivoramorphan (Mammalia) from the ‘Bridger B’ (Black’s Fork member, Bridger Formation, Bridgerian Nalma, middle Eocene) of Wyoming, USA1
- Biostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy of the Bridgerian-Uintan Washakie Formation, Washakie Basin, Wyoming1
- Magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, southwestern Montana1
- Mammals of the Bridgerian (middle Eocene) Elderberry Canyon Local Fauna of eastern Nevada1
- A Mammalian Fauna from the Base of the Eocene Cathedral Bluffs Tongue of the Wasatch Formation, Cottonwood Creek Area, Southeast Washakie Basin, Wyoming1
Each of the 32 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. 9 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 Helaletes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Helaletes 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, “Helaletes”
- 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 itTapiroidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1872