Megascapheus townsendii

Megascapheus Elliot, 1903, a relative of Megascapheus townsendii — not Megascapheus townsendii itself

Not Megascapheus townsendii. This is Megascapheus Elliot, 1903, a relative — both are Geomyidae.

usernameforinaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
Townsend's pocket gopherPBDB
Sits inside
MegascapheusPBDB
Diet
browserPBDB, for Geomyidae
Life habit
fossorialPBDB, for Geomyidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 118 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 3 of 3 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 3 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

3 occurrences of Megascapheus 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

3 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

American Falls Lake Bed E — 42.80°N, 112.90°W

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The named rock units Megascapheus townsendii 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.

Megascapheus townsendii and its relatives

Pleistocene

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

Found in the same rock

130 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Megascapheus 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

3 references

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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Megascapheus Elliot, 1903

Source
GBIF
Credit
usernameforinaturalist
Licence
CC BY-NC 4.0
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

No 3D scan of Megascapheus townsendii 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.

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itMegascapheus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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