Lepus townsendii

The white-tailed jackrabbit, also known as the prairie hare and the white jack, is a species of hare found in western North America. Like all hares and rabbits, it is a member of the family Leporidae of order Lagomorpha. It is a solitary individual except where several males court a female in the breeding season. Litters of four to five young are born in a form, a shallow depression in the ground, hidden among vegetation. This jackrabbit has two described subspecies: L. townsendii townsendii occurring west of the Rocky Mountains and L. townsendii campanius occurring east of the Rocky Mountains.

Lepus townsendii

Connormah · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
white-tailed jackrabbitPBDB
Sits inside
LepusPBDB
Diet
grazer, browserPBDB, for Leporidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Leporidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At least 762 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 9 of 10 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 10 occurrences1.8–1.8 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences1.1–1.1 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences1.1–997 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences997 ka–920 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences920 ka–843 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences843 ka–767 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences767 ka–690 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences690 ka–613 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences613 ka–537 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences537 ka–460 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences460 ka–383 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences383 ka–307 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences307 ka–230 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences230 ka–153 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences153 ka–77 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences77 ka–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences774 ka11.7 ka2.3 Mya0 Mya

10 occurrences of Lepus townsendii 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

10 occurrences

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

Bermont — 27.70°N, 82.50°W

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The named rock units Lepus townsendii 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.

Lepus townsendii and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Lepus townsendii and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

337 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Lepus townsendii, 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

7 references

Each of the 10 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. 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 Lepus townsendii

Credit
Connormah
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
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

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 itLepus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bachman 1839