Paratylopus
Paratylopus is an extinct genus of camelid, endemic to North America. It lived from the Oligocene to the Middle Miocene 33.9—16.0 Mya, existing for approximately 18 million years. Fossils have been found in western Wyoming, and from eastern Nebraska to northeastern Colorado and southwestern South Dakota.

Ted Fremd · Public Domain · 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
- CamelidaePBDB
- Diet
- browser, browserPBDB, for Camelidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Camelidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37 Mya to 16.3 Mya.
22 occurrences of Paratylopus on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
22 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
3 formations
- Brule Formation · White River Group11
- John Day Formation8
- Chadron Formation1
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The named rock units Paratylopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Paratylopus and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Paratylopus and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
123 taxa- Hypertragulus calcaratus6 sites
- Poebrotherium wilsoni6 sites
- Daphoenus5 sites
- Hesperocyon gregarius5 sites
- Palaeolagus haydeni5 sites
- Megalagus turgidus4 sites
- Poebrotherium eximium4 sites
- Hyaenodon crucians3 sites
- Ischyromys3 sites
- Ischyromys typus3 sites
- Leptomeryx evansi3 sites
- Merycoidodon culbertsonii3 sites
- Palaeogale sectoria3 sites
- Paroreodon3 sites
- Allomys2 sites
- Archaeotherium mortoni2 sites
- Capacikala gradatus2 sites
- Centetodon marginalis2 sites
- Cormocyon copei2 sites
- Diceratherium2 sites
- Entoptychus2 sites
- Eumys elegans2 sites
- Florentiamys2 sites
- Gentilicamelus sternbergi2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Paratylopus, 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
7 references- Camelidae9
- Geology and paleontology of the upper John Day beds, John Day river valley, Oregon: lithostratigraphic and biochronologic revision in the Haystack Valley and Kimberly areas (Kimberly and Mt. Misery quadrangles)6
- Revised chronostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the John Day Formation (Turtle Cove and Kimberly Members), Oregon, with implications for updated calibration of the Arikareean North American land mammal age2
- Elocene-Oligocene climatic change in North America: The White River Formation near Douglass, East-Central Wyoming2
- Camelidae1
- Geology and paleontology of the Oligocene Harris Ranch Badlands, southwestern South Dakota1
- A contribution to the Tertiary geology and paleontology of northeastern Colorado1
Each of the 22 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 Paratylopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ted Fremd
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Paratylopus was found in Sketchfab.
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, “Paratylopus”
- 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 itCamelidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Matthew 1904)