Heterohyus
Heterohyus is an extinct genus of apatemyid from the early to late Eocene. A small, tree-dwelling creature with elongated fore- and middle fingers, in these regards it somewhat resembled a modern-day aye-aye.

Chris Woodrich · CC BY-SA 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
- ApatemyidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Apatemyidae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Apatemyidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Apatemyidae
Time the record covers
At least 10 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 33.9 Mya.
31 occurrences of Heterohyus 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
31 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
10 formations
- Lignites de Soissonais Formation4
- Creechbarrow Limestone Formation4
- Perrière Formation3
- Bembridge Limestone Formation1
- Headon Beds Formation1
- Perriere Formation1
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The named rock units Heterohyus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Heterohyus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Heterohyus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
519 taxa- Amphisbaenidae6 sites
- Gekkonidae6 sites
- Dichodon5 sites
- Necrosaurus5 sites
- Palaeotherium5 sites
- Pseudoloris parvulus5 sites
- Saturninia gracilis5 sites
- Serpentes5 sites
- Suevosciurus5 sites
- Allaeochelys4 sites
- Anguini4 sites
- Boidae4 sites
- Dunnophis matronensis4 sites
- Eopelobates4 sites
- Geiseltaliellus4 sites
- Leptadapis magnus4 sites
- Neochelys eocaenica4 sites
- Ophisaurus4 sites
- Palaeopython cadurcensis4 sites
- Placosaurus4 sites
- Adapis3 sites
- Amphiperatherium minutum3 sites
- Artiodactyla3 sites
- Axestemys vittata3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Heterohyus, 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
14 references- Les mammiferes d'Egerkingen et l'histoire des faunes de l'Eocene d'Europe7
- Apatotheria (Mammalia) de l'Eocène inférieur de France et de Belgique6
- Les nouvelles faunes de vertebres anterieurs a la "Grande Coupure" decouvertes dans les phosphorites du Quercy4
- Mammals from the Bartonian (middle/late Eocene) of the Hampshire Basin, southern England3
- Les rongeurs de Chéry-Chartreuve et Rocourt-Saint-Martin (est du bassin de Paris; Aisne, France). Leur place parmi les faunes de l'Eocène Moyen d'Europe2
- Oldest record of Apatemyidae (Mammalia, Apatotheria) from Spain and the taxonomic status of Spanish paromomyids (Mammalia, Primatomorpha)1
- Microchoerus hookeri nov. sp., a new late Eocene European microchoerine (Omomyidae, Primates): New insights on the evolution of the genus Microchoerus1
- New postcranial bones of the extinct mammalian family Nyctitheriidae (Paleogene, UK): Primitive euarchontans with scansorial locomotion1
- Nuevos mamíferos del Eoceno Inferior de Silveirinha (Baixo Mondego, Portugal)1
- Mammalian taphonomy and palaeoecology of the Bembridge Limestone Formation (Late Eocene, S. England)1
- Une faune du niveau d'Egerkingen (MP 14; Bartonien inférieur) dans les phosphorites du Quercy (Sud de la France)1
- Zur Stellung der Wirbeltierfauna des Geiseltals, insbesondere der Mammalier, im europäischen Mitteleozän (Position of the European Middle Eocene vertebrate fauna of the Geisel Valley, with special focus on mammals)1
Each of the 31 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. 2 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 Heterohyus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Chris Woodrich
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Heterohyus”
- 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 itApatemyidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gervais 1848