Viverravus politus

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- ViverravusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Viverravidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Viverravidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 1.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 57.5 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 60.9 Mya to 48.07 Mya.
47 occurrences of Viverravus politus on record. 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
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Viverravus politus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
268 taxa- Ectocion osbornianus27 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius18 sites
- Didymictis protenus17 sites
- Sifrhippus grangeri14 sites
- Viverravus acutus14 sites
- Thryptacodon antiquus12 sites
- Coryphodon11 sites
- Hyopsodus loomisi11 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus10 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani9 sites
- Apheliscus chydaeus8 sites
- Arctodontomys wilsoni8 sites
- Dissacus praenuntius8 sites
- Haplomylus simpsoni8 sites
- Hyopsodus8 sites
- Arfia zele7 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus7 sites
- Didymictis leptomylus7 sites
- Dipsalidictis transiens7 sites
- Homogalax protapirinus7 sites
- Allognathosuchus6 sites
- Azygonyx grangeri6 sites
- Cantius ralstoni6 sites
- Cardiolophus radinskyi6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Viverravus politus, 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
11 references- Ancestry and Species Definition in Paleontology: A Stratocladistic Analysis of Paleocene-Eocene Viverravidae (Mammalia, Carnivora) from Wyoming15
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary14
- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary7
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals3
- Earliest Eocene mammalian fauna from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum at Sand Creek Divide, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming2
- New Wa-0 mammalian fauna from Castle Gardens in the southeastern Bighorn Basin1
- Distribution and stratigraphic correlation of upper Paleocene and lower Eocene fossil mammal and plant localities of the Fort Union, Willwood, and Tatman formations, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming1
- New earliest Wasatchian mammalian fauna from the Eocene of northwestern Wyoming: composition and diversity in a rarely sampled high-floodplain assemblage1
- Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Piceance Creek Basin. Northwestern Colorado1
- Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary vertebrate paleontological reconnaissance, Togwotee Pass area, northwestern Wyoming1
- New Omomyid Primates (Haplorhini, Tarsiiformes) from Middle Eocene Rocks of West-Central Hot Springs County, Wyoming1
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. 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 Viverravus politus
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Viverravus politus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itViverravus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Matthew and Granger 1915