Heliscomys
via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- HeliscomyidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 20 million years on record.
The record covers at least 37 Mya to 16.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 39.7 Mya to 12.5 Mya.
49 occurrences of Heliscomys on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
49 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
12 formations
- Brule Formation · White River Group10
- Chadron Formation · White River Group8
- Cypress Hills Formation5
- Sespe Formation3
- White River Formation3
- Barstow Formation2
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The named rock units Heliscomys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Heliscomys and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Heliscomys and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
621 taxa- Herpetotherium fugax16 sites
- Brontotheriidae14 sites
- Hesperocyon gregarius14 sites
- Adjidaumo minimus12 sites
- Domnina gradata12 sites
- Paradjidaumo trilophus12 sites
- Paradjidaumo11 sites
- Leptomeryx10 sites
- Palaeolagus haydeni10 sites
- Aulolithomys bounites9 sites
- Hesperocyon9 sites
- Leptictidae9 sites
- Megalagus turgidus9 sites
- Palaeolagus burkei9 sites
- Palaeolagus temnodon9 sites
- Prosciurus vetustus9 sites
- Agriochoerus8 sites
- Altasciurus relictus8 sites
- Douglassciurus jeffersoni8 sites
- Eomyidae8 sites
- Eumys elegans8 sites
- Herpetotherium valens8 sites
- Ischyromys typus8 sites
- Ischyromys veterior8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 42 sites for Heliscomys, 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
30 references- Geomyoid rodents (Mammalia) from the Orellan (middle Oligocene) of Nebraska,5
- Magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, southwestern Montana4
- A New Species of Heliscomys and Recognition of the Family Heliscomyidae (Geomyoidea: Rodentia)4
- Fossil mammals from ant mounds situated on exposures of the Big Cottonwood Creek Member of the Chadron Formation (latest Eocene - Early Oligocene), Sioux County, Nebraska3
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals3
- Correlation of the early Oligocene (Chadronian) in northwestern Nebraska3
- Geomyoid rodents (Mammalia) from the Ridgeview local fauna, early-Early Arikareean (Late Oligocene) of western Nebraska2
- Eocene-Oligocene faunas of the Cypress Hills Formation, Saskatchewan2
- Preliminary biostratigraphy of the White River Group (Oligocene, Chadron and Brule formations) in the vicinity of Chadron, Nebraska2
- New oreodont (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from the late Oligocene (early Arikareean) of Florida1
- Early Oligocene rodents from the Rodent Hill Locality in the Cypress Hills Formation, southwest Saskatchewan1
- A new Mio-Pliocene marine bone-bed from north-central Chile1
Each of the 49 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. 18 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 Heliscomys
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHeliscomyidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1873