Perognathus flavus
The silky pocket mouse is a species of rodent in the family Heteromyidae. It is found in northern and central Mexico and the southwest region of the United States. It is a species of least concern, according to the IUCN, with no known major threats. The silky pocket mouse eats seeds, succulent parts of plants and nuts, and carries food in its cheek pouches. It lives in low valley bottoms with soft soils, among weeds and shrubs, where it burrows in the sand to bury seed caches. The species is more tolerant of harsh habitat conditions than other pocket mice.

Bob Beatson from Tucson, Arizona · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- PerognathusPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, browserPBDB, for Heteromyidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Perognathus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Perognathus flavus 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene75%
- Holocene25%
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.
Perognathus flavus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Perognathus flavus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
140 taxa- Dipodomys spectabilis4 sites
- Megascapheus bottae4 sites
- Neotoma albigula4 sites
- Antrozous pallidus3 sites
- Dipodomys merriami3 sites
- Dipodomys ordii3 sites
- Marmota flaviventris3 sites
- Myotis velifer3 sites
- Onychomys torridus3 sites
- Otospermophilus variegatus3 sites
- Peromyscus eremicus3 sites
- Peromyscus maniculatus3 sites
- Reithrodontomys megalotis3 sites
- Sylvilagus audubonii3 sites
- Bassariscus astutus2 sites
- Camelops2 sites
- Canis latrans2 sites
- Chaetodipus hispidus2 sites
- Cnemidophorus2 sites
- Cratogeomys castanops2 sites
- Crotalus2 sites
- Crotaphytus collaris2 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus2 sites
- Erethizon dorsatum2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Perognathus flavus, 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- Late Pleistocene and early Recent mammals from Fowlkes Cave, southern Culberson County, Texas2
- Reconstruction of mid Wisconsinan environments in southern New Mexico1
- Pleistocene-Recent fauna of the Isleta Caves, Bernalillo County, New Mexico1
Each of the 4 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 Perognathus flavus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bob Beatson from Tucson, Arizona
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Perognathus flavus 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
- 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 itPerognathus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Baird 1855