Pyrotheria
Pyrotheria is an order of extinct meridiungulate mammals. These elephant-like ungulates include the genera Baguatherium, Carolozittelia, Colombitherium, Griphodon, Propyrotherium, Proticia, and Pyrotherium.

Nobu Tamura email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com http://spinops.blogspot.com/ · 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
- SudamericungulataPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 19 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 29 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 21 Mya.
47 occurrences of Pyrotheria 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
47 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
10 formations
- Pozo Formation11
- Sarmiento Formation8
- Salla Formation3
- Las Chacras Formation3
- Agua de la Piedra Formation · Malargüe Group2
- El Milagro Formation2
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The named rock units Pyrotheria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pyrotheria and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Pyrotheria and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
396 taxa- Pyrotherium11 sites
- Caviomorpha8 sites
- Trichodactylidae8 sites
- Characiformes7 sites
- Leporinus7 sites
- Propyrotherium saxeum7 sites
- Serrasalminae indet.7 sites
- Hydrolycus6 sites
- Notoungulata6 sites
- Plantae5 sites
- Toxodontia5 sites
- Trachytherus spegazzinianus5 sites
- Anura4 sites
- Archaeohyrax patagonicus4 sites
- Argyrohyrax proavus4 sites
- Astrapotheriidae4 sites
- Caimaninae4 sites
- Charophyceae4 sites
- Eoincamys valverdei4 sites
- Eusuchia4 sites
- Griphodon4 sites
- Leontinia gaudryi4 sites
- Lepidosirenidae4 sites
- Magnoliopsida4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 37 sites for Pyrotheria, 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
25 references- Pyrotherium macfaddeni, sp. nov. (late Oligocene, Bolivia) and the pedal morphology of pyrotheres5
- Early Oligocene caviomorph rodents from Shapaja, Peruvian Amazonia4
- A 60-million-year Cenozoic history of western Amazonian ecosystems in Contamana, eastern Peru4
- Reconstruction of the dentition of Propyrotherium saxeum Ameghino, 1901 (Mammalia, Pyrotheria): taxonomic and phylogenetic implications4
- Eocene mammals from volcaniclastic deposits of the Somun Cura Plateau: biostratigraphic implications for north Patagonia Paleogene3
- Biotic community and landscape changes around the Eocene–Oligocene transition at Shapaja, Peruvian Amazonia: Regional or global drivers?3
- The beginning of the age of mammals in South America. Part II3
- Cranial morphology and phylogenetic relationships of Trigonostylops wortmani, an Eocene South American native ungulate2
- A new Pre-Deseadan Pyrothere (Mammalia) from northern Peru and the wear facets of molariform teeth of Pyrotheria2
- Vertebrate paleontology, geology, and geochronology of the Tapera de López and Scarritt Pocket, Chubut Province, Argentina2
- New anatomical data on Pyrotherium (Pyrotheriidae) from the late Oligocene of Mendoza, Argentina1
- New data on diversity of Notohippidae from the Oligocene of Mendoza, Argentina1
Each of the 47 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. 13 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 Pyrotheria
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com http://spinops.blogspot.com/
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pyrotheria 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Pyrotheria”
- 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 itSudamericungulata through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Ameghino 1895)