Hemicyon

Searched as Hemicyon sansaniensis parvus. The Paleobiology Database treats Hemicyon as the accepted name.

Hemicyon, also known as the "dog-bear", is an extinct genus of hemicyonine bear, which probably originated in Eurasia but was found in Europe, Asia and North America during the Miocene epoch, existing for approximately 16 to 13 mya. Hemicyon is the best-known genus in the Hemicyoninae, a subfamily intermediate between bears and their Caniform ancestors, but most often classified as bears. Hemicyonine bears should not be confused with Amphicyonids (bear-dogs), which are their own separate family of carnivores.

Hemicyon

Jonathan Chen · CC BY 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
HemicyoninaePBDB
Diet
herbivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ursidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Ursidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 2.2 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 15.98 Mya and 13.82 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Miocene — about 1 of 1 occurrenceMiocene16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16.48 Mya13.32 Mya

1 occurrence of Hemicyon 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

1 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.

Hemicyon and its relatives

Miocene

Where Hemicyon and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

485 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Hemicyon, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Hemicyon

Credit
Jonathan Chen
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Hemicyon 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 itHemicyoninae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lartet 1851