Stegodon aurorae
Stegodon aurorae is an extinct species of Stegodon known from Early Pleistocene of Japan and possibly Taiwan. It appears to be an insular dwarf species, exhibiting smaller body size than its mainland ancestors.

Haruhiko Okumura from Tsu, Japan · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- StegodonPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Elephantidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Elephantidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 3.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Stegodon aurorae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene94%
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
3 formations
- Nishiyagi Formation1
- Hirayama Formation1
- Komiya Formation · Kazusa Group1
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The named rock units Stegodon aurorae 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.
Stegodon aurorae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Stegodon aurorae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
22 taxa- ? Trogecervus sp.1 site
- Bos (Bibos)1 site
- Carcharias cuspidatus1 site
- Carcharodon arnoldi1 site
- Carcharodon carcharias1 site
- Carcharodon hastalis1 site
- Cervus1 site
- Cervus (Deperetia)1 site
- Cervus (Sika)1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Delphinidae1 site
- Elaphurus1 site
- Elephas clifti1 site
- Elephas hysudricus1 site
- Elephas indicus buski1 site
- Eschrichtius akishimaensis1 site
- Mammuthus trogontherii1 site
- Mysticeti1 site
- Palaeoloxodon naumanni1 site
- Physeter1 site
- Rhinoceros1 site
- Toyotamaphimeia taiwanicus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Stegodon aurorae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- The Plio-Pleistocene fossil mammals from the Kasumi and Tama Hills2
- Late neogene planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy of the Tainan Foothills Region, Tainan, Taiwan2
- On a new fossil elephant from Okubo-mura, Akashi-gun, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan1
Each of the 5 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 Stegodon aurorae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Haruhiko Okumura from Tsu, Japan
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Stegodon aurorae 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 itStegodon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Matsumoto 1918)