Proborhyaena
Proborhyaena is an extinct genus of proborhyaenid sparassodont that lived during the Oligocene of South America. It is considered to be the largest of the sparassodonts.

Rextron · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- ProborhyaenidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Sparassodonta
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Theria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Sparassodonta
Time the record covers
At most 33 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 48.07 Mya and 15.98 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Proborhyaena on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
7 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
3 formations
- Sarmiento Formation4
- Agua de la Piedra Formation · Malargüe Group1
- Fray Bentos Formation1
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The named rock units Proborhyaena has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Proborhyaena and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Proborhyaena and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
123 taxa- Argyrohyrax proavus3 sites
- Meteutatus lagenaformis3 sites
- Stenotatus3 sites
- Toxodontia3 sites
- Andrewsornis2 sites
- Hegetotheriopsis sulcatus2 sites
- Proadinotherium2 sites
- Progaleopithecus tournoueri2 sites
- Prohegetotherium sculptum2 sites
- Prosotherium garzoni2 sites
- Pyrotherium2 sites
- Rhynchippus pumilus2 sites
- Trachytherus spegazzinianus2 sites
- Acarechimys leucotheae1 site
- Acaremyidae1 site
- Acdestodon bonapartei1 site
- Acdestoides praecursor1 site
- Acrocyon riggsi1 site
- Ancylocoelus frequens1 site
- Anura1 site
- Archaeohyracidae1 site
- Archaeohyrax patagonicus1 site
- Archaeohyrax suniensis1 site
- Archaeophylus patrius1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Proborhyaena, 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
5 references- The Deseadan, Early Oligocene, Marsupialia of South America3
- Quebrada Fiera (Mendoza), an important paleobiogeographic center in the South American late Oligocene1
- La Edad Deseadense (Oligoceno inferior) de la Formación Fray Bentos y su contenido paleontológico, con especial referencia a la presencia de Proborhyaena cf. gigantea Ameghino (Marsupialia: Borhyaenidae) en el Uruguay. Nota preliminar1
- The Deseadan vertebrate fauna of the Scarritt Pocket, Patagonia1
- New carnivorous marsupials from the Deseado Formation of Patagonia1
Each of the 7 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 Proborhyaena
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rextron
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Proborhyaena 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 itProborhyaenidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ameghino 1897