Pedetes
Pedetes is a genus of rodent, the springhares, in the family Pedetidae. Members of the genus are distributed across southern and Eastern Africa.

Devonpike at English Wikipedia · 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- Also called
- springhaasPBDB
- Sits inside
- PedetidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Pedetidae
- Life habit
- saltatorialPBDB
- 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.
11 occurrences of Pedetes 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
11 occurrences- Pliocene18%
- Pleistocene73%
- Holocene9%
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
2 formations
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group4
- Vogel River Series Formation3
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The named rock units Pedetes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pedetes and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pedetes and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
243 taxa- Canidae8 sites
- Panthera pardus8 sites
- Damaliscus7 sites
- Mammalia7 sites
- Bovidae6 sites
- Connochaetes6 sites
- Crocuta crocuta6 sites
- Lupulella mesomelas6 sites
- Taurotragus oryx6 sites
- Cercopithecidae5 sites
- Equus quagga burchelli5 sites
- Hyaenidae5 sites
- Hystrix africaeaustralis5 sites
- Phacochoerus5 sites
- Suidae5 sites
- Amphibia4 sites
- Antidorcas4 sites
- Antidorcas marsupialis australis4 sites
- Aves4 sites
- Beatragus4 sites
- Equus capensis4 sites
- Eudorcas thomsoni4 sites
- Felidae4 sites
- Gazella4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Pedetes, 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
9 references- Laetoli: a Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania3
- Mid-Pleistocene change in large mammal faunas of East Africa1
- The Swartkrans Palaeontological Research Project in perspective: results and conclusions1
- Swartkrans: A Cave's Chronicle of Early Man1
- Taphonomy, Paleoecology, and Hominids of Lainyamok, Kenya1
- Provenience, Age and Associations of Archaic Homo Sapiens Crania fron Lake Eyasi, Tanzania1
- Palaeoecology of the Pliocene and lower Pleistocene hominids of southern Africa: how good is the chronological and paleoenvironmental evidence?1
- Faunal Evidence for Early Stockkeeping in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya: Preliminary Findings1
- Re-interpretation of the Swartkrans site and its remains1
Each of the 11 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 Pedetes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Devonpike at English Wikipedia
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pedetes 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, “Pedetes”
- 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 itPedetidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Illiger 1811