Lemmus
The genus Lemmus contains several species of lemming sometimes referred to as the true lemmings. They are distributed throughout the Holarctic, particularly in the Palearctic.

Argus fin · Public Domain · 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
- LemminiPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 1.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
48 occurrences of Lemmus 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
48 occurrences- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene10%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lemmus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 47 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lemmus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lemmus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
515 taxa- Microtus23 sites
- Myodes22 sites
- Mimomys18 sites
- Pliomys17 sites
- Equus15 sites
- Ochotona14 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus13 sites
- Beremendia fissidens13 sites
- Dicrostonyx13 sites
- Allocricetus11 sites
- Lepus11 sites
- Sorex11 sites
- Sorex minutus11 sites
- Citellus10 sites
- Rangifer tarandus10 sites
- Apodemus9 sites
- Cricetus cricetus9 sites
- Stephanorhinus etruscus9 sites
- Bison8 sites
- Canis lupus8 sites
- Glis sackdillingensis8 sites
- Gulo gulo8 sites
- Microtus oeconomus8 sites
- Cervus elaphus7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 48 sites for Lemmus, 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
27 references- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung9
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary5
- Biochronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Betfia (Bihor, Romania)3
- Morlan, 19843
- Les rongeurs de l'Aven I des Abimes de la Fage a Noailles (Correze)3
- The Weichselian (c. 115,000 - 10,000 B.P.) vertebrate fauna of Norway2
- Quaternary vertebrate faunas of Canada and Alaska and their suggested chronological sequence2
- Säugetierfunde und Pleistozänstratigraphie in der Kolyma-Niederung (Pleistocene stratigraphy from the Kolyma fluvial plain and it's mammal fossils)2
- The Kor & Bot collection revisited, with a biostratigraphic interpretation of the Early Pleistocene Oosterschelde Fauna (Oosterschelde Estuary, the Netherlands)1
- Pleistocene vertebrates from the pre-late Wisconsinan Mill Creek site, St. Clair County, Michigan1
- A Middle Pleistocene (late Irvingtonian) mammalian fauna from Thistle Creek, Klondike Goldfields region of Yukon Territory, Canada1
- A new species of Mustela (Mammalia; Carnivora; Mustelidae) from the Fort Selkirk fauna (Early Pleistocene) of Yukon Territory, Canada1
Each of the 48 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. 15 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 Lemmus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Argus fin
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lemmus 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 itLemmini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Link 1795