Pteromyini

Flying squirrels are a tribe of 50 species of squirrels in the family Sciuridae. Despite their name, they are not in fact capable of full flight in the same way as birds or bats, but they are able to glide from one tree to another with the aid of a patagium, a furred skin membrane that stretches from wrist to ankle. Their long tails also provide stability as they glide. Anatomically they are very similar to other squirrels with a number of adaptations to suit their lifestyle; their limb bones are longer and their hand bones, foot bones, and distal vertebrae are shorter. Flying squirrels are able to steer and exert control over their glide path with their limbs and tail.

Pteromyini

Henrique Pacheco · CC BY 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
SciuridaePBDB
Diet
granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Sciuridae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At least 10 million years on record.

The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 5.09 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 3.55 Mya.

Oligocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 4 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesPliocene24–23 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21–21 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences5.1–4.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.4–3.7 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences3.7–3.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15.98 Mya5.09 Mya23.5 Mya3 Mya

4 occurrences of Pteromyini on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

4 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.

Found in

1 formation

Loh — 45.46°N, 101.20°E

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The named rock units Pteromyini has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pteromyini and its relatives

Miocene

Where Pteromyini and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

34 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Pteromyini, 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

Each of the 4 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 Pteromyini

Credit
Henrique Pacheco
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pteromyini 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.

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 itSciuridae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brandt 1855