Lycalopex gymnocercus
The Pampas fox, also known as the grey pampean fox, Pampas zorro, Azara's fox, or Azara's zorro, is a medium-sized zorro, or "false" fox, native to the South American Pampas. Azara in some of its alternative common names is a reference to Spanish naturalist Félix de Azara.

Ariel Mergener Henckel · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- pampas foxPBDB
- Sits inside
- LycalopexPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Canidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Canidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 400 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 400 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Lycalopex gymnocercus 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Lycalopex gymnocercus 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.
Lycalopex gymnocercus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lycalopex gymnocercus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
49 taxa- Dolichotis2 sites
- Lama2 sites
- Akodon1 site
- Calomys1 site
- Cavia1 site
- Chaetophractus vellerosus1 site
- Chaetophractus villosus1 site
- Coendou magnus1 site
- Ctenomys1 site
- Eligmodontia typus1 site
- Equus caballus1 site
- Galea1 site
- Galea leucoblephara1 site
- Glyptodon1 site
- Glyptodon clavipes1 site
- Glyptodon reticulatus1 site
- Graomys griseoflavus1 site
- Hemiauchenia paradoxa1 site
- Hippidion principale1 site
- Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris1 site
- Lagostomus1 site
- Leopardus pardalis1 site
- Lestodelphys halli1 site
- Lestodon armatus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Lycalopex gymnocercus, 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- Una fauna local Lujanense (Pleistocen Superior–Holoceno inferior) del sur de Uruguay: Santa Regina, Departamento de Colonia1
- The pampas fox Lycalopex gymnocercus (Fischer, 1814) (Carnivora, Canidae) in the late Pleistocene of northern Uruguay1
- First record of a Late Holocene fauna associated with an ephemeral fluvial sequence in La Pampa Province, Argentina. Taphonomy and paleoenvironment1
Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Lycalopex gymnocercus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ariel Mergener Henckel
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lycalopex gymnocercus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Pampas fox”
- 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 itLycalopex through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Fischer 1814)