Leptalestes

U.C.PARTY · CC BY 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- PediomyidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Metatheria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Theria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 17 million years on record.
The record covers at least 83.6 Mya to 66 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 85.7 Mya to 63.4 Mya.
56 occurrences of Leptalestes on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
56 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
16 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group23
- Lance Formation12
- Judith River Formation · Montana Group2
- St. Mary River Formation2
- St. Mary River Formation2
- Fox Hills Formation · Montana Group2
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The named rock units Leptalestes 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.
Leptalestes and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Leptalestes and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
399 taxa- Meniscoessus robustus26 sites
- Protolambda hatcheri24 sites
- Cimolodon nitidus23 sites
- Mesodma thompsoni22 sites
- Didelphodon vorax20 sites
- Pediomys elegans19 sites
- Gypsonictops hypoconus17 sites
- Alphadon marshi16 sites
- Mesodma formosa14 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus14 sites
- Protolambda florencae14 sites
- Cimolomys gracilis13 sites
- Lepisosteus occidentalis13 sites
- Opisthotriton kayi13 sites
- Trionychidae13 sites
- Turgidodon rhaister13 sites
- Champsosaurus12 sites
- Mesodma hensleighi12 sites
- Paronychodon12 sites
- Scapherpeton tectum12 sites
- Glasbius twitchelli11 sites
- Hadrosauridae11 sites
- Belonostomus longirostris10 sites
- Brachychampsa montana10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Leptalestes, 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
26 references- Fossil mammals from the type Lance Formation, Wyoming. Part II. Marsupialia11
- A study of Mammalia and geology across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in Garfield County, Montana6
- The Bug Creek problem and the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition at McGuire Creek, Montana5
- Mammals from the end of the age of dinosaurs in North Dakota and southeastern Montana, with a reappraisal of geographic differentiation among Lancian mammals3
- Mammal evolution near the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary3
- Late Cretaceous mammals of western South Dakota, 19743
- Preliminary report on the mammals form Lane's Little Jaw Site Quarry: a latest Cretaceous (earliest Puercan?) local fauna, Hell Creek Formation, southeastern Montana2
- Vertebrate palaeocommunities of the lower Judith River Group (Campanian) of southeastern Alberta, Canada, as interpreted from vertebrate microfossil assemblages2
- Fossil mammals from the "Mesaverde" Formation (Late Cretaceous, Judithian) of the Bighorn and Wind River basins, Wyoming, with definitions of Late Cretaceous North American Land-Mammal "Ages"2
- Mammals from the Upper Cretaceous Oldman Formation, Alberta. II. Pediomys Marsh (Marsupialia)2
- Latest Cretaceous mammals of upper part of Edmonton Formation of Alberta, Canada, and review of marsupial-placental dichotomy in mammalian evolution2
- Early mammalian recovery after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: A high-resolution view from McGuire Creek area, Montana, USA1
Each of the 56 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. 14 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 Leptalestes
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- U.C.PARTY
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Leptalestes 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPediomyidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Davis 2007