Lutreolina crassicaudata
The big lutrine opossum, also called little water opossum, thick-tailed opossum and coligrueso, is a long-tailed, otter-like mammal native to grasslands of South America. It generally lives near water and is active at night, dawn or dusk. It eats mice, insects and crabs. Like all opossums, it is a marsupial and carries its young in a pouch.

Ezequiel Racker · CC BY 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
- lutrine opossumPBDB
- Sits inside
- LutreolinaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivore, carnivorePBDB, for Didelphidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Didelphidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Didelphidae
Time the record covers
At least 2.9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Lutreolina crassicaudata on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
4 occurrences- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene25%
- Holocene25%
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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lutreolina crassicaudata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lutreolina crassicaudata and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Lutreolina crassicaudata and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
89 taxa- Calomys2 sites
- Marmosa2 sites
- Oxymycterus2 sites
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Akodon1 site
- Akodon (Akodon) azarae1 site
- Andinomys1 site
- Arctotherium tarijense1 site
- Arctotherium wingei1 site
- Bibimys labiosus1 site
- Bufo cf. marinus horribilis1 site
- Canis proplatensis1 site
- Canis tarijensis1 site
- Cavia1 site
- Ceratophrys1 site
- Cervus percultus1 site
- Cervus tuberculatus1 site
- Chaetophractus villosus1 site
- Charitoceros1 site
- Chrysocyon brachyurus1 site
- Clyomys riograndensis1 site
- Coendou1 site
- Coendou magnus1 site
- Conepatus suffocans1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Lutreolina crassicaudata, 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
3 references- Didelphidae from the Chapadmalal formation in the Museo Municipal de Ciencias Naturales of Mar del Plata2
- Diversidade de pequenos mamíferos (Didelphimorphia e Rodentia) do Holoceno do nordeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil: implicações taxonômicas e paleo ambientais1
- The Eocene to Pleistocene vertebrates of Bolivia and their stratigraphic context: a review1
Each of the 4 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 Lutreolina crassicaudata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ezequiel Racker
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Lutreolina crassicaudata paranalis · MVZ:Mamm:MVZ:Mamm:166101
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itLutreolina through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Desmarest 1804)