Thylacosmilidae

Thylacosmilidae is an extinct family of metatherian predators, related to the modern marsupials, which lived in South America between the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Like other South American mammalian predators that lived prior to the Great American Biotic Interchange, these animals belonged to the order Sparassodonta, which occupied the ecological niche of many eutherian mammals of the order Carnivora from other continents. The family's most notable feature are the elongated, laterally flattened fangs, which is a remarkable evolutionary convergence with other saber-toothed mammals like Barbourofelis and Smilodon.

Thylacosmilidae

Claire Houck from New York City, USA · CC BY-SA 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
SparassodontaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Sparassodonta
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Theria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Sparassodonta

Time the record covers

At least 13 million years on record.

The record covers at least 17.5 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 21 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Miocene — about 12 of 19 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 7 of 19 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 0 of 19 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences12–11 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences11–10 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences10–9.8 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences8.6–7.9 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences7.9–7.3 Mya — about 1 occurrence7.3–6.6 Mya — about 2 occurrences6.6–6.0 Mya — about 2 occurrences6.0–5.3 Mya — about 2 occurrences5.3–4.7 Mya — about 1 occurrence4.7–4.0 Mya — about 1 occurrence4.0–3.4 Mya — about 2 occurrences3.4–2.7 Mya — about 2 occurrences2.7–2.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences17.5 Mya3.6 Mya21.5 Mya2.1 Mya

19 occurrences of Thylacosmilidae 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

19 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

13 formations

Cerro Azul — 37.73°S, 63.53°WCerro Azul — 37.02°S, 64.51°WCorral Quemado — 27.22°S, 66.93°WCorral Quemado — 26.97°S, 66.84°WLa Victoria — 3.22°N, 75.22°WLa Victoria — 3.33°N, 75.17°WEpecuén — 37.22°S, 63.55°WCollón Curá — 41.71°S, 70.48°WItuzaingo — 31.48°S, 60.23°WAndalhuala — 26.68°S, 66.03°WSarmiento — 45.67°S, 68.71°WVillavieja — 3.28°N, 75.17°WBrochero — 31.78°S, 64.99°WMonte Hermoso — 38.97°S, 61.70°WChapadmalal — 38.12°S, 57.70°WPuerto Belgrano — 38.98°S, 61.82°W

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The named rock units Thylacosmilidae 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.

Thylacosmilidae and its relatives

Miocene

Where Thylacosmilidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

392 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Thylacosmilidae, 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

14 references

Each of the 19 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. 2 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 Thylacosmilidae

Credit
Claire Houck from New York City, USA
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thylacosmilidae 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 itSparassodonta through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Riggs 1933