Notharctus tenebrosus
Notharctus is a genus of adapiform primate that lived in North America during the early to middle Eocene. Known from many geologic formations, including the Bridger Basin and the Devil's Graveyard Formation, Notharctus was wide-ranging throughout North America.

Jonathan Chen · 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
- NotharctusPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Primates
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Primates
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 51.1 Mya and 39.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Notharctus tenebrosus 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
16 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
4 formations
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The named rock units Notharctus tenebrosus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Notharctus tenebrosus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Notharctus tenebrosus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
178 taxa- Antiacodon pygmaeus7 sites
- Hyopsodus paulus7 sites
- Hyrachyus modestus7 sites
- Sinopa rapax7 sites
- Palaeosyops paludosus4 sites
- Viverravus minutus4 sites
- Washakius insignis4 sites
- Anaptomorphus aemulus3 sites
- Baptemys wyomingensis3 sites
- Helaletes nanus3 sites
- Hyopsodus minusculus3 sites
- Limnocyon verus3 sites
- Mesonyx obtusidens3 sites
- Miacis parvivorus3 sites
- Microsus cuspidatus3 sites
- Omomys carteri3 sites
- Orohippus pumilus3 sites
- Pantolestes longicaudus3 sites
- Paramys delicatus3 sites
- Saniwa ensidens3 sites
- Scenopagus edenensis3 sites
- Sinopa major3 sites
- Smilodectes gracilis3 sites
- Thinocyon velox3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Notharctus tenebrosus, 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
10 references- The species Notharctus from the Middle Eocene3
- A revision of the Eocene primates of the genus Notharctus3
- Phylogeny of middle Eocene Adapidae (Mammalia, Primates) in North America: Smilodectes and Notharctus2
- Mammalian Faunal Zones of the Bridger Middle Eocene2
- Oldest evidence for grooming claws in euprimates1
- Sympatry of two species of Notharctus in the Bridger Basin, Wyoming1
- Mammals of the Bridgerian (middle Eocene) Elderberry Canyon Local Fauna of eastern Nevada1
- Middle Eocene marsupials (Mammalia) from northeastern Utah and the mammalian fauna from Powder Wash1
- Fossil Mammals from the Lower Buck Hill Group, Eocene of Trans-Pecos Texas: Marsupicarnivora, Primates, Taeniodonta, Condylarthra, Bunodont Artiodactyla, and Dinocerata1
- Third account of new Vertebrata from the Bridger Eocene of Wyoming Territory1
Each of the 16 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 Notharctus tenebrosus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Notharctus tenebrosus · AMNH:FM:131950
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Notharctus”
- 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 itNotharctus through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leidy 1870