Ochotona
Searched as Ochotona antiqua. The Paleobiology Database treats Ochotona as the accepted name.
A pika is a small, mountain-dwelling mammal native to Asia and North America. With short limbs, a very round body, an even coat of fur, and no external tail, they resemble their close relative the rabbit, but with short, rounded ears. The large-eared pika of the Himalayas and nearby mountains lives at elevations of more than 6,000 m (20,000 ft).

Charles J. Sharp · 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- Also called
- pikaPBDB
- Sits inside
- OchotonidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ochotonidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Ochotonidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 8.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 3.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Ochotona on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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 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.
Ochotona and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Ochotona and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
1,256 taxa- Mimomys45 sites
- Microtus33 sites
- Myodes28 sites
- Apodemus25 sites
- Equus25 sites
- Lepus25 sites
- Citellus23 sites
- Allocricetus21 sites
- Cricetus cricetus21 sites
- Sorex21 sites
- Allophaiomys pliocaenicus19 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus19 sites
- Chiroptera19 sites
- Beremendia fissidens18 sites
- Spalax18 sites
- Lagurus17 sites
- Pliomys17 sites
- Spermophilus17 sites
- Prosiphneus15 sites
- Talpa fossilis15 sites
- Vulpes vulpes15 sites
- Sicista praeloriger14 sites
- Bison13 sites
- Myotis13 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 123 sites for Ochotona, 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- Pliocene Volcanic Terrain of the South Caucasus: The Missing Link in Eurasian Palaeobiogeography5
- Lagomorphs (Mammalia) from the early Pliocene of Dorkovo, Bulgaria1
- A new species of jerboa (Mammalia, Rodentia, Allactaga) from the late Miocene of Ukraine1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Ochotona
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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, “Pika”
- 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 itOchotonidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Link 1795