Pantolestidae
Pantolestidae is a paraphyletic family of placental mammals from extinct order Pantolesta, that lived in North America, Asia and Europe from the early Paleocene to middle Oligocene. They first appear in North America, whence they spread to Europe and Asia.

Nobu Tamura email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com http://spinops.blogspot.com/ · 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
- PantolestoidaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, durophagePBDB
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- freshwater,terrestrialPBDB
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 27.3 Mya.
247 occurrences of Pantolestidae 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
247 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
42 formations
- Willwood Formation74
- Fort Union Formation39
- Paskapoo Formation19
- Wasatch Formation14
- Wind River Formation9
- Nacimiento Formation7
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The named rock units Pantolestidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 18 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pantolestidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Pantolestidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,878 taxa- Ectocion osbornianus46 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani44 sites
- Coryphodon41 sites
- Palaeosinopa38 sites
- Hyopsodus35 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius35 sites
- Phenacodus34 sites
- Esthonyx bisulcatus33 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus33 sites
- Paramys copei33 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus31 sites
- Palaeosinopa veterrima31 sites
- Sifrhippus grangeri31 sites
- Bessoecetor septentrionalis28 sites
- Thryptacodon antiquus28 sites
- Diacodexis27 sites
- Homogalax protapirinus27 sites
- Phenacolemurinae26 sites
- Viverravus acutus26 sites
- Allognathosuchus25 sites
- Palaeosinopa incerta25 sites
- Crocodylia24 sites
- Didymictis24 sites
- Didymictis protenus23 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 199 sites for Pantolestidae, 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
92 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 boundary43
- New earliest Tiffanian (late Paleocene) mammals from Cochrane 2, southwestern Alberta, Canada23
- Faunal Zonation of the Willwood Formation in the Central Bighorn Basin, Wyoming18
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary12
- A review of the Proteutheria and Insectivora of the Willwood Formation (Lower Eocene), Bighorn Basin, Wyoming11
- Revision of the Wind River faunas, early Eocene of central Wyoming. Part 5. Geology and biostratigraphy of the upper part of the Wind River Formation, northeastern Wind River Basin7
- The Tiffanian Land-Mammal Age (middle and late Paleocene) in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming6
- Les pantolestides (Mammalia, Pantolesta) de l'Eocene inferieur de Premontre (Aisne, France)6
- Late Paleocene (Tiffanian) mammalian fauna of two localities in eastern Montana5
- New pantolestids (Mammalia, Eutheria) from the late Paleocene (late middle Tiffanian) Roche Percée local fauna, southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada4
- Paleocene vertebrate paleontology of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico4
- Late Cretaceous and Paleocene mammal localities of southern Alberta4
Each of the 247 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. 80 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 Pantolestidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com http://spinops.blogspot.com/
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pantolestidae 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 itPantolestoidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1884