Polydolops

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- PolydolopidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Metatheria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Theria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 27 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 29 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 57 Mya to 21 Mya.
49 occurrences of Polydolops on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
49 occurrencesThese 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
4 formations
- Sarmiento Formation19
- La Meseta Formation5
- Las Flores Formation · Río Chico Group4
- Andesitas Huancache Formation3
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Polydolops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 18 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Polydolops and its relatives
EoceneWhere Polydolops and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
287 taxa- Archaeopithecus rogeri10 sites
- Henricosbornia lophodonta9 sites
- Notostylops7 sites
- Victorlemoineia6 sites
- Amphidolops serrula5 sites
- Antepithecus brachystephanus5 sites
- Asmithwoodwardia subtrigona5 sites
- Isotemnus5 sites
- Isotemnus primitivus5 sites
- Notopithecus5 sites
- Notopithecus adapinus5 sites
- Notostylops murinus5 sites
- Pleurostylodon similis5 sites
- Transpithecus obtentus5 sites
- Trigonostylops5 sites
- Anisolambda fissidens4 sites
- Caroloameghinia mater4 sites
- Didelphimorphia4 sites
- Marsupialia4 sites
- Maxschlosseria praeterita4 sites
- Oldfieldthomasia debilitata4 sites
- Pliodolops rothi4 sites
- Polydolopidae4 sites
- Prostegotherium astrifer4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 26 sites for Polydolops, 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- Systematics of the extinct South American marsupial family Polydolopidae9
- The beginning of the age of mammals in South America. Part I7
- Biostratigraphy of the Casamayoran, Early Eocene of Patagonia5
- Interrelationships of Polydolopidae (Mammalia: Marsupialia) from South America and Antarctica4
- New Early Eocene mammalian fauna from western Patagonia, Argentina4
- Notices préliminaires sur des mammifères nouveaux des terrains Crétacé de Patagonie {preliminary notes on new mammals from the Cretaceous terrains of Patagonia]4
- Annotated catalogue of the fossil vertebrates from Antarctica housed in the Museo de la Plata, Argentina. I. Birds and Land Mammals from La Meseta Formation (Eocene - Early Oligocene)3
- Eocene (Ypresian-Lutetian) mammals from Cerro Pan de Azúcar (Gaiman, Chubut Province, Argentina)2
- The late middle Eocene terrestrial vertebrate fauna from Seymour Island; the tails of the Eocene Patagonian size distribution2
- Fossil Marsupialia in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle collected by André Tournouër from Patagonia, southern Argentina2
- Systematics of the South American marsupial family Microbiotheriidae2
- Descriptions of the oldest known South American mammals, from the Rio Chico Formation2
Each of the 49 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 content1

Picture of Polydolops
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Polydolops was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPolydolopidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ameghino 1897