Lama guanicoe
The guanaco is a camelid native to South America, closely related to the domesticated llama. Guanacos are one of two wild South American camelids; the other species is the vicuña, which lives at higher elevations.

Charles J. Sharp · 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- Also called
- guanacoPBDB
- Sits inside
- LamaPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Lama
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Lama
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
41 occurrences of Lama guanicoe 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
41 occurrences- Pleistocene77%
- Holocene23%
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
5 formations
- Lujan Formation4
- Salto Ander Egg Formation4
- Chacra La Blanqueada Formation2
- Matadero Saldungaray Formation1
- Santa Vitória Formation1
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The named rock units Lama guanicoe has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 29 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lama guanicoe and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lama guanicoe and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
195 taxa- Hippidion11 sites
- Chaetophractus villosus8 sites
- Dusicyon avus8 sites
- Panochthus8 sites
- Ctenomys7 sites
- Lagostomus maximus7 sites
- Megatherium americanum7 sites
- Eutatus seguini6 sites
- Glyptodon reticulatus6 sites
- Macrauchenia patagonica6 sites
- Toxodon platensis6 sites
- Doedicurus clavicaudatus5 sites
- Equus5 sites
- Equus caballus5 sites
- Glossotherium robustum5 sites
- Glyptodon5 sites
- Hemiauchenia paradoxa5 sites
- Mylodon5 sites
- Ozotoceros bezoarticus5 sites
- Panthera onca5 sites
- Smilodon populator5 sites
- Arctotherium4 sites
- Glyptodon clavipes4 sites
- Holochilus brasiliensis4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 39 sites for Lama guanicoe, 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
23 references- Formas Terminales de Hippidion (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) de los Yacimientos del Pleistoceno Tardio-Holoceno de la Patagonia (Argentina y Chile)7
- Late Cenozoic mammal bio-chronostratigraphy in southwestern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina5
- Vertebrate continental assemblage from the Last Interglacial in southern South America (Entre Ríos, Argentina). Biostratigraphy and paleoenvironment3
- Los vertebrados del Pleistoceno tardío del arroyo Napostá Grande, provincia de Buenos Aires. Aspectos paleoambientales3
- A Partially Complete Skeleton of Hippidion Saldiasi Roth, 1899 (Mammalia: Perissodactyla) from the Late Pleistocene of the High Andes in Northern Chile2
- Le site paléo-indien de Piedra Museo (Patagonie). Sa contribution au débat sur le premier peuplement du continent amérlcaln2
- Pre-Hispanic mammal exploitation and hunting strategies in the eastern Pampa subregion of Argentina2
- Los Mamiferos de la Fauna Local Paso Otero (Pleistoceno Tardio), Provincia de Buenos Aires. Aspectos Paleoambientales y Biostratigraficos2
- Nearctic Pleistocene ungulates from the Pampean region (Argentina) in the historical collections of Santiago Roth in Switzerland: an overview1
- Nuevos registros de mamíferos del Pleistoceno Tardío (MIS 5) en el sur de la Mesopotamia argentina1
- Síntesis actualizada del registro paleontológico pleistoceno en el Noroeste argentino1
- The Casa del Diablo cave (Puno, Peru) and the late Pleistocene demise of megafauna in the Andean Altiplano1
Each of the 41 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. 11 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 content2
Picture of Lama guanicoe
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Repositorio CADIC
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Guanaco”
- 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 itLama through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Müller 1776)