Petaurista
Petaurista is a genus of rodent in the family Sciuridae. They are large to very large flying squirrels found in forests and other wooded habitats in southern and eastern Asia.

Umeshsrinivasan · 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
- Giant flying squirrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- PteromyinaePBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- glidingPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.
5 occurrences of Petaurista 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
5 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Petaurista and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Petaurista and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
164 taxa- Felis3 sites
- Hapalomys3 sites
- Hipposideros3 sites
- Hystrix3 sites
- Leopoldamys3 sites
- Myotis3 sites
- Niviventer3 sites
- Rhinoceros sinensis3 sites
- Sciurotamias3 sites
- Soriculus3 sites
- Sus3 sites
- Anourosorex2 sites
- Apodemus2 sites
- Arctonyx collaris2 sites
- Belomys2 sites
- Bos (Bibos)2 sites
- Cervus unicolor2 sites
- Chimarrogale2 sites
- Chiropodomys2 sites
- Cuon2 sites
- Macaca2 sites
- Martes2 sites
- Miniopterus schreibersi2 sites
- Murina2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Petaurista, 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- Huanglong Cave: A Late Pleistocene human fossil site in Hubei Province, China2
- A newly discovered Gigantopithecus fauna from Sanhe Cave, Chongzuo, Guangxi, South China2
- A preliminary study of the early Pleistocene deposits and the mammalian fauna from the Renzi Cave, Fancheng, Anhui, China1
Each of the 5 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 content2
Picture of Petaurista
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Umeshsrinivasan
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Petaurista”
- 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 itPteromyinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Link 1795