Microcavia australis

The southern mountain cavy is a species of South American rodent in the family Caviidae.

Microcavia australis

Melisa Nemecek · CC BY 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
Sits inside
MicrocaviaPBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Caviidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Caviidae
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.

Pleistocene — about 4 of 7 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 3 of 7 occurrences420 ka–390 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences390 ka–360 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences360 ka–330 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences330 ka–300 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences300 ka–270 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences270 ka–240 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences240 ka–210 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences210 ka–180 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences180 ka–150 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences150 ka–120 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences120 ka–90 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences90 ka–60 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences60 ka–30 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences30 ka–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences900 ka0 Mya

7 occurrences of Microcavia australis 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

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

Lujan — 34.60°S, 59.15°WLujan — 38.75°S, 60.60°W

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The named rock units Microcavia australis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Microcavia australis and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Microcavia australis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

71 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Microcavia australis, 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

5 references

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 content1

Picture of Microcavia australis

Credit
Melisa Nemecek
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Microcavia australis 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 itMicrocavia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Geoffroy and Dorbigny 1833