Mesonychidae

Ryan Somma · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikidata/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
- condylarthPBDB
- Sits inside
- MesonychiaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 29 million years on record.
The record covers at least 63.4 Mya to 33.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 23.04 Mya.
273 occurrences of Mesonychidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
273 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
64 formations
- Willwood Formation68
- Fort Union Formation16
- Washakie Formation15
- Wasatch Formation11
- Uinta Formation11
- Nacimiento Formation8
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The named rock units Mesonychidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 40 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 37 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mesonychidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Mesonychidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,961 taxa- Ectocion osbornianus57 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius42 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani40 sites
- Coryphodon39 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus36 sites
- Thryptacodon antiquus34 sites
- Dissacus praenuntius30 sites
- Pachyaena ossifraga30 sites
- Didymictis protenus29 sites
- Dissacus29 sites
- Allognathosuchus28 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus28 sites
- Hyopsodus27 sites
- Hyopsodus loomisi27 sites
- Phenacodus27 sites
- Esthonyx bisulcatus26 sites
- Paramys copei24 sites
- Sifrhippus grangeri24 sites
- Viverravus acutus24 sites
- Arenahippus aemulor22 sites
- Homogalax protapirinus22 sites
- Pachyaena21 sites
- Cantius mckennai20 sites
- Diacodexis20 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 241 sites for Mesonychidae, 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
108 references- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary40
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary21
- Carnivorous mammals from the middle Eocene Washakie Formation, Wyoming, USA, and their diversity trajectory in a post-warming world13
- The European Mesonychid Mammals: Phylogeny, Ecology, Biogeography, and Biochronology12
- Faunal Zonation of the Willwood Formation in the Central Bighorn Basin, Wyoming11
- The Paleogene mammals of China10
- New Mesonychid (Mammalia) material from the lower Paleogene of the Erlian Basin, Nei Mongol, China8
- The Tiffanian Land-Mammal Age (middle and late Paleocene) in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming6
- Paleocene vertebrate paleontology of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico6
- New mesonychian dentitions from the Paleocene of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming5
- Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Piceance Creek Basin. Northwestern Colorado5
- Mesonychids from Lushi Basin, Henan Province, China4
Each of the 273 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. 96 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 Mesonychidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Ryan Somma
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mesonychidae 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMesonychia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1875