Peromyscus leucopus
The white-footed mouse is a rodent native to North America from southern Canada to the Southwestern United States and Mexico. It is a species of the genus Peromyscus, a closely related group of New World mice often called "deermice". In the Maritimes, its only location is a disjunct population in southern Nova Scotia. It is also erroneously known as the woodmouse, a name which instead describes the unrelated Apodemus sylvaticus, particularly in Texas.

D. Gordon E. Robertson · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Also called
- white-footed mousePBDB
- Sits inside
- PeromyscusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Peromyscus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 198 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
18 occurrences of Peromyscus leucopus 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
18 occurrences- Pleistocene87%
- Holocene13%
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
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The named rock units Peromyscus leucopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Peromyscus leucopus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Peromyscus leucopus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
609 taxa- Odocoileus virginianus11 sites
- Castor canadensis10 sites
- Marmota monax10 sites
- Neotoma floridana9 sites
- Ondatra zibethicus9 sites
- Peromyscus maniculatus9 sites
- Procyon lotor9 sites
- Tamias striatus9 sites
- Clethrionomys gapperi8 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus8 sites
- Sorex fumeus8 sites
- Ursus americanus8 sites
- Blarina brevicauda7 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius7 sites
- Erethizon dorsatum7 sites
- Glaucomys volans7 sites
- Microtus pennsylvanicus7 sites
- Microtus pinetorum7 sites
- Rana pipiens7 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus7 sites
- Sorex cinereus7 sites
- Spermophilus tridecemlineatus7 sites
- Synaptomys cooperi7 sites
- Mephitis mephitis6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Peromyscus leucopus, 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
15 references- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna3
- Late Pleistocene and early Recent mammals from Fowlkes Cave, southern Culberson County, Texas2
- After Hopewell in Southern Québec1
- A long-nosed peccary (Mylohyus nasutus) from Knob Rock Cave, Indiana1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- Post-Wisconsinan Vertebrate Remains from a Fissure Deposit Near Ripplemead, Virginia1
- Late Pleistocene mammals from a cave in Tamaulipas, Mexico1
- A new Peromyscus (Rodentia: Cricetidae) from the Pleistocene of Maryland1
- Pleistocene mammals from Ladds, Bartow County, Georgia1
- The Pleistocene vertebrates of Michigan1
- The Moore Pit local fauna; Pleistocene of Texas1
- The Good Creek Formation, Pleistocene of Texas, and Its Fauna1
Each of the 18 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. 3 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 content2
Picture of Peromyscus leucopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- D. Gordon E. Robertson
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Peromyscus leucopus leucopus · UMMZ:mammals:115693
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 itPeromyscus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Rafinesque 1818)