Papio
Baboons are primates comprising the genus Papio, one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys, in the family Cercopithecidae. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma baboon. Each species is native to one of six areas of Africa and the hamadryas baboon is also native to part of the Arabian Peninsula. Baboons are among the largest non-hominoid primates and have existed for at least two million years.

Muhammad Mahdi Karim · GFDL 1.2 · 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
- baboonPBDB
- Sits inside
- PapioninaPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, folivorePBDB, for Cercopithecidae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Cercopithecidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
78 occurrences of Papio 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
78 occurrences- Pliocene14%
- Pleistocene63%
- Holocene23%
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
13 formations
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group5
- Kromdraai Formation5
- Olduvai Formation3
- Koobi Fora Formation · Omo Group3
- Vogel River Series Formation3
- Wehaietu Formation · Awash Group2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Papio has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 49 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Papio and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Papio and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
615 taxa- Bovidae34 sites
- Hystrix africaeaustralis31 sites
- Mammalia30 sites
- Taurotragus oryx29 sites
- Lupulella mesomelas27 sites
- Procavia capensis27 sites
- Panthera pardus26 sites
- Phacochoerus aethiopicus25 sites
- Raphicerus campestris25 sites
- Tragelaphus strepsiceros24 sites
- Equus quagga burchelli23 sites
- Syncerus caffer23 sites
- Canis22 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus21 sites
- Oreotragus oreotragus21 sites
- Suidae21 sites
- Tragelaphus scriptus21 sites
- Equus20 sites
- Felis lybica20 sites
- Pelea capreolus20 sites
- Potamochoerus porcus20 sites
- Redunca fulvorufula20 sites
- Connochaetes19 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius19 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 77 sites for Papio, 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
59 references- Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Implications of Late Holocene Archaeological Faunas from the Orange Free State and North Central Cape Province, South Africa4
- Travertines and Cave Deposits of the Kaap Escarpment of South Africa, and the Type Locality of Australopithecus Africanus Dart4
- Laetoli: a Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania3
- Later Stone Age Faunal Samples from Heuningneskrans Shelter (Transvaal) and Leopard's Hill Cave (Zambia)3
- The bone assemblages from the excavated sites2
- The earliest Acheulean from Konso-Gardula2
- Implications of Late Quaternary mammalian fauna from Lukenya Hill (South-Central Kenya) for paleoenvironmental change and faunal extinctions2
- Taphonomy, Paleoecology, and Hominids of Lainyamok, Kenya2
- The Hunters of the Hunted? An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy2
- Re-interpretation of the Swartkrans site and its remains2
- The Mammalian Fauna of the Klasies River Mouth Sites, Southern Cape Province, South Africa2
- The Prehistory of Eastern Zambia2
Each of the 78 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. 47 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 content3
Picture of Papio
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Muhammad Mahdi Karim
- Licence
- GFDL 1.2
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Papio anubis · AP-RCNE:Mamm
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- EDDyLab @ULiege
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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, “Baboon”
- 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 itPapionina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Erxleben 1777)