Vicugna vicugna

The vicuña or vicuna is a wild South American camelid which lives in high alpine areas of the Andes. It is a relative of the llama, the domesticated descendant of the guanaco, the only other still wild South American camelid.

Vicugna vicugna

Thomas Quine · 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
VicugnaPBDB
Diet
grazerPBDB, for Vicugna
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Vicugna
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla

Time the record covers

At most 389 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 400 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 3 of 3 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 3 occurrences420 ka–390 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences390 ka–360 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences360 ka–330 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences330 ka–300 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences300 ka–270 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences270 ka–240 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences240 ka–210 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences210 ka–180 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences180 ka–150 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences150 ka–120 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences120 ka–90 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences90 ka–60 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences60 ka–30 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences30 ka–0 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences900 ka0 Mya

3 occurrences of Vicugna vicugna on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

3 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

Tafi del Valle — 26.85°S, 65.71°W

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The named rock units Vicugna vicugna 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.

Vicugna vicugna and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Vicugna vicugna and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

40 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Vicugna vicugna, 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 3 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 Vicugna vicugna

Credit
Thomas Quine
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Vicugna vicugna 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 itVicugna through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Molina 1782)