Malacothrix

via iDigBio · CC BY-NC-SA · via iDigBio. 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
- DendromurinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 5.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Malacothrix 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
7 occurrences- Pliocene37%
- Pleistocene63%
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
- Kromdraai Formation2
- Makapansgat Formation2
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group1
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The named rock units Malacothrix has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Malacothrix and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Malacothrix and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
206 taxa- Dasymys7 sites
- Mus7 sites
- Mystromys7 sites
- Otomys7 sites
- Dendromus6 sites
- Epimys (Aethomys)6 sites
- Elephantulus5 sites
- Eptesicus5 sites
- Rhinolophus5 sites
- Steatomys5 sites
- Suncus varilla5 sites
- Tatera5 sites
- Acomys4 sites
- Cryptomys hottentotus4 sites
- Elephantulus brachyrhynchus4 sites
- Equus capensis4 sites
- Graphiurus4 sites
- Hystrix africaeaustralis4 sites
- Mammalia4 sites
- Praomys4 sites
- Rhabdomys4 sites
- Amblysomus3 sites
- Aves3 sites
- Bovidae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Malacothrix, 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- The Swartkrans Palaeontological Research Project in perspective: results and conclusions1
- The Makapansgat australopithecine environment1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil mammalian microfauna of southern Africa: a preliminary report including descriptions of two new fossil muroid genera (Mammalia: Rodentia)1
- The Hunters of the Hunted? An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy1
- Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Implications of Late Holocene Archaeological Faunas from the Orange Free State and North Central Cape Province, South Africa1
- The Mammalian Fauna from the Middle and Later Stone Age (Later Pleistocene) Levels of Border Cave, Natal Province, South Africa1
- Some evidence of chronology and paleoecology of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai from the fossil Bovidae1
Each of the 7 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 Malacothrix
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC BY-NC-SA
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Malacothrix TYPICA · UMMZ:mammals:117815
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 itDendromurinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wagner 1843