Petaurus breviceps

The sugar glider is a small, omnivorous, arboreal, and nocturnal gliding possum. The common name refers to its predilection for sugary foods such as sap and nectar and its ability to glide through the air, much like a flying squirrel. They have very similar habits and appearance to the flying squirrel, despite not being closely related—an example of convergent evolution. The scientific name, Petaurus breviceps, translates from Latin as "short-headed rope-dancer", a reference to their canopy acrobatics.

Petaurus breviceps

Uncredited · 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
sugar gliderPBDB
Sits inside
PetaurusPBDB
Diet
insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Petaurus
Life habit
arborealPBDB, for Petaurus
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At least 117 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pliocene — about 0 of 13 occurrencesPleistocene — about 12 of 13 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 13 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.5–2.4 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.4–2.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.2–2.1 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.1–2.0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.0–1.8 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.1–1.0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.0–924 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences924 ka–821 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences821 ka–719 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences719 ka–616 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences616 ka–513 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences513 ka–411 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences411 ka–308 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences308 ka–205 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences205 ka–103 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences103 ka–0 Mya — about 5 occurrences129 ka – 11.7 ka3.08 Mya0 Mya

13 occurrences of Petaurus breviceps 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

13 occurrences

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.

Petaurus breviceps and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Petaurus breviceps and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

213 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Petaurus breviceps, 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

Each of the 13 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 Petaurus breviceps

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Petaurus breviceps 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 itPetaurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Waterhouse 1839)