Leptarctus

President and Fellows of Harvard College · CC BY-NC 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
- LeptarctinaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Mustelidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 6.9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 16.3 Mya to 9.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 4.7 Mya.
51 occurrences of Leptarctus 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
51 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
19 formations
- Valentine Formation · Ogallala Group8
- Ash Hollow Formation6
- Ogallala Formation4
- Mascall Formation4
- Olcott Formation3
- Alachua Formation2
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The named rock units Leptarctus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Leptarctus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Leptarctus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
749 taxa- Mylagaulidae11 sites
- Aelurodon ferox9 sites
- Archaeolaginae9 sites
- Camelidae9 sites
- Leptocyon vafer9 sites
- Parvericius montanus9 sites
- Eucastor tortus8 sites
- Marmotini8 sites
- Metechinus amplior8 sites
- Ustatochoerus medius8 sites
- Epicyon haydeni7 sites
- Epicyon saevus7 sites
- Paratomarctus temerarius7 sites
- Stirtonhyus xiphodonticus7 sites
- Teleoceras7 sites
- Ticholeptus zygomaticus7 sites
- Untermannerix copiosus7 sites
- Aphelops megalodus6 sites
- Blastomeryx gemmifer6 sites
- Borophaginae6 sites
- Calippus placidus6 sites
- Copemys longidens6 sites
- Cupidinimus nebraskensis6 sites
- Domninoides valentinensis6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 49 sites for Leptarctus, 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
34 references- A new species of Leptarctus (Carnivora, Mustelidae) from the late Clarendonian (late Miocene) of Kansas5
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals4
- Craniodental morphology and diet of Leptarctus oregonensis (Mammalia, Carnivora, Mustelidae) from the Mascall Formation (Miocene) of central Oregon3
- Newly described specimens of leptarctine mustelids expand their geographic range in the western United States2
- The fauna and chronostratigraphy of the middle Miocene Mascall type area, John Day Basin, Oregon, USA2
- Additional Carnivorans from the Early Hemingfordian Miller Local Fauna, Florida2
- A New Species of the Miocene Leptarctine Leptarctus (Carnivora: Mustelidae) From the Early Hemphillian of Kansas2
- Mustelidae2
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Ogallala Group in Nebraska2
- Miocene mammals of the Split Rock area, Granite Mountains basin, central Wyoming2
- Leptarctus ancipidens (White) (Carnivora: Mammalia) from the Punchbowl Formation, Cajon Pass, California2
- A new species of Leptarctus (Carnivora, Mustelidae) from the late Miocene of Texas1
Each of the 51 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. 22 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 Leptarctus
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- President and Fellows of Harvard College
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Leptarctus wortmani · UCMP:V:315187
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itLeptarctinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leidy 1856