Interatheriidae
Interatheriidae is an extinct family of notoungulate mammals from South America. Interatheriids are known from the Middle Eocene (Mustersan) to the Early Pleistocene (Uquian). These animals were principally small-sized, occupying a habitat like hares, marmots and viscachas. The majority were very small, like rodents.

Jonathan Chen · 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
- TypotheriaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Notoungulata
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 44 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 2.58 Mya.
281 occurrences of Interatheriidae 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
281 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
45 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation95
- Sarmiento Formation29
- Collón Cura Formation20
- Villavieja Formation · Honda Group9
- Cura-Mallín Formation7
- Geste Formation · Pastos Grande Group6
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The named rock units Interatheriidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 21 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 32 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Interatheriidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Interatheriidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,050 taxa- Protypotherium praerutilum29 sites
- Protypotherium27 sites
- Neoreomys australis23 sites
- Hapalops19 sites
- Prozaedyus18 sites
- Adinotherium17 sites
- Nesodon17 sites
- Protypotherium australe17 sites
- Cladosictis patagonica16 sites
- Stenotatus16 sites
- Proeutatus15 sites
- Propalaehoplophoridae15 sites
- Astrapotherium14 sites
- Interatherium14 sites
- Interatherium extensus14 sites
- Perimys14 sites
- Sipalocyon gracilis14 sites
- Acarechimys minutissimus13 sites
- Acarechimys minutus13 sites
- Adinotherium ovinum13 sites
- Proeutatus oenophorum13 sites
- Prolagostomus13 sites
- Thoatherium minusculum13 sites
- Nesodon imbricatus12 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 139 sites for Interatheriidae, 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
82 references- Paleobiology of Santacrucian native ungulates (Meridiungulata: Astrapotheria, Litoptera and Notoungulata)24
- The Interatheriinae from the Late Oligocene of Mendoza (Argentina), with comments on some Deseadan Interatheriidae21
- Bioestratigrafía de la Formación Santa Cruz (Mioceno Inferior) en el extremo sudeste de la Patagonia20
- Notoungulata and Astrapotheria (Mammalia, Meridiungulata) of the Santa Cruz Formation (Early-Middle Miocene) Along the Río Santa Cruz, Argentine Patagonia17
- The Interatheriinae notoungulates from the middle Miocene Collón Curá Formation in Argentina15
- A new genus of interatheres from the Miocene of Colombia13
- The Interatheriinae (Mammalia, Notoungulata) of the Friasian sensu stricto and Mayoan (middle to late Miocene), and the fossils from Cerro Zeballos, Patagonia, Argentina10
- Systematic revision of the species of Protypotherium (Notoungulata: Interatheriidae) from the Santa Cruz Formation (Early–Middle Miocene), Argentinian Patagonia: a new phylogenetic hypothesis for the Interatheriidae9
- New interatheriines (Interatheriidae, Notoungulata) from the Paleogene of Central Chile and Southern Argentina9
- Rodent-like notoungulates (Typotheria) from Gran Barranca, Chubut Province, Argentina: phylogeny and systematics7
- Systematic Revision of Interatherium and Icochilus (Interatheriidae, Notoungulata) from the Santa Cruz Formation (Early To Middle Miocene), Santa Cruz Province, Argentina6
- New interatheres (Mammalia, Notoungulata) from the late Oligocene Salla Beds of Bolivia6
Each of the 281 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. 70 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 Interatheriidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Interatheriidae 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 itTypotheria through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Ameghino 1887)