Hilarcotherium
Hilarcotherium is an extinct genus of astrapotheriid mammals that lived in South America during the Middle Miocene (Laventan). The type species is H. castanedaii, found in sediments of the La Victoria Formation, part of the Honda Group in the department of Tolima in Colombia. In 2018, Carrillo et al. described a partial skull and mandible of a second species H. miyou from the Castilletes Formation in the Cocinetas Basin of northern Colombia, and estimated the body weight of the animal at 6,456 kilograms (14,233 lb).

Rextron · 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
- UruguaytheriinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Astrapotheria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 2.1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 13.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 11 Mya.
7 occurrences of Hilarcotherium 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
7 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
2 formations
- Castilletes Formation5
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Hilarcotherium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Hilarcotherium and its relatives
MioceneWhere Hilarcotherium and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
21 taxa- Podocnemididae4 sites
- Chelonoidis2 sites
- Chelus2 sites
- Scirrotherium2 sites
- Callichthyidae1 site
- Chelus colombiana1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Gavialoidea1 site
- Huilatherium1 site
- Hyperleptus1 site
- Lepidosiren1 site
- Lycopsis padillai1 site
- Miocochilius anomopodus1 site
- Mylossoma1 site
- Neodolodus colombianus1 site
- Pericotoxodon1 site
- Phractocephalus1 site
- Piaractus1 site
- Purussaurus1 site
- Purussaurus neivensis1 site
- Scleromys1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Hilarcotherium, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- The Neogene record of northern South American native ungulates5
- Reporte del hallazgo de restos de Hilarcotherium sp. (Mammalia, Astrapotheria) y de material asociado en una nueva localidad fosilífera del valle inferior del Magdalena, ciénaga de Zapatosa, Cesar, Colombia1
- Hilarcotherium castanedaii, gen. et sp. nov., a new Miocene astrapothere (Mammalia, Astrapotheriidae) from the Upper Magdalena Valley, Colombia1
Each of the 7 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Hilarcotherium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rextron
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Hilarcotherium 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 itUruguaytheriinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vallejo-Pareja et al. 2015