Marmotini
Ground squirrels are rodents of the squirrel family (Sciuridae) that generally live on the ground or in burrows, rather than in trees like the tree squirrels. The term is most often used for the medium-sized ground squirrels, as the larger ones are more commonly known as marmots or prairie dogs, while the smaller and less bushy-tailed ground squirrels tend to be known as chipmunks.

Rotadefterim · CC BY-SA 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- Sits inside
- SciuridaePBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Sciuridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,053 occurrences of Marmotini 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
1,053 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
129 formations
- Barstow Formation23
- Ash Hollow Formation · Ogallala Group16
- Arikaree Formation14
- MR Caliente Formation13
- Kingsdown Formation13
- Valentine Formation · Ogallala Group12
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The named rock units Marmotini has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 105 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 628 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Marmotini and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Marmotini and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,710 taxa- Spermophilus50 sites
- Camelidae48 sites
- Archaeolaginae43 sites
- Mylagaulidae28 sites
- Perognathinae28 sites
- Platygonus28 sites
- Leporidae25 sites
- Geomyoidea24 sites
- Plesippus simplicidens24 sites
- Camelops22 sites
- Copemys22 sites
- Gomphotheriidae22 sites
- Sigmodon minor22 sites
- Tamias ateles22 sites
- Antilocapridae21 sites
- Thamnophis21 sites
- Copemys longidens20 sites
- Equus20 sites
- Miospermophilus20 sites
- Parvericius montanus20 sites
- Tayassuinae20 sites
- Protospermophilus19 sites
- Teleoceras19 sites
- Geomys18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 736 sites for Marmotini, and this reads 240 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
372 references- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals91
- Systematic revision of fossil prairie dogs with descriptions of two new species28
- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna28
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Ogallala Group in Nebraska21
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary20
- Paleontology and nonmarine stratigraphy of the Cuyama Valley badlands, California; Part 1, Geology, faunal interpretations, and systematic descriptions of Chiroptera, Insectivora, and Rodentia19
- A late Pleistocene and early Holocene mammalian fauna from Little Beaver Cave, Central Ozarks, Missouri.16
- Geologic history, stratigraphy, and paleontology of SAM Cave, north-central New Mexico16
- Biochronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Betfia (Bihor, Romania)15
- Miocene mammals of the Split Rock area, Granite Mountains basin, central Wyoming15
- The Pliocene and Pleistocene Sciuridae (Mammalia, Rodentia) from Poland15
- Biostratigraphy and biochronology of early Arikareean through late Hemingfordian small mammal faunas from the Nebraska Panhandle and adjacent areas14
Each of the 1,053 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. 360 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 content1
Picture of Marmotini
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rotadefterim
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Marmotini was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itSciuridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.