Holochilus sciureus
The Amazonian marsh rat, also known as the common marsh rat, or simply the marsh rat, is a rodent species from South America.

Vincent A. Vos · 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
- HolochilusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Holochilus sciureus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene96%
- Holocene5%
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.
Holochilus sciureus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Holochilus sciureus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
121 taxa- Trachops cirrhosus2 sites
- Accipitridae1 site
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Anas bahamensis1 site
- Anura1 site
- Aramides cajaneus1 site
- Aramus guarauna1 site
- Ardeidae1 site
- Arundinicola leucocephala1 site
- Asio stygius1 site
- Athene cunicularia1 site
- Bubo1 site
- Burhinus1 site
- Buteo1 site
- Buteogallus1 site
- Buteogallus aequinoctialis1 site
- Buteogallus meridionalis1 site
- Caiman1 site
- Cairina moschata1 site
- Calidris1 site
- Calidris canutus1 site
- Calidris fuscicollis1 site
- Calomys1 site
- Canidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Holochilus sciureus, 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
2 references- Mammalian fossils from Gruta do Ioiô cave and past of the Chapada Diamantina, northeastern Brazil, using taphonomy, radiocarbon dating and paleoecology1
- Late Pleistocene cingulates (Mammalia: Xenarthra) from Mene de Inciarte tar pits, Sierra de Perijá, western Venezuela1
Each of the 2 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 Holochilus sciureus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vincent A. Vos
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Holochilus sciureus 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 itHolochilus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wagner 1842