Protoreodon
Searched as Agriotherium sp.. The Paleobiology Database treats Protoreodon as the accepted name.
Agriotherium is an extinct genus of bears whose fossils are found in Miocene through Pleistocene-aged strata of Eurasia and Africa. The earliest species, A. inexpetans, evolved during the Late Miocene, around 7.6 Mya. The latest record for the genus was around 1.8 Mya, during the Early Pleistocene.

Natural History Museum, London · 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
- AgriochoeridaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Agriochoeridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Agriochoeridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At least 3.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 3.55 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 1.4 Mya.
46 occurrences of Protoreodon 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
46 occurrences- Miocene62%
- Pliocene35%
- Pleistocene3%
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
17 formations
- Varswater Formation4
- Rancho Viejo Beds Formation3
- Sahabi Formation2
- Ogallala Formation1
- Ash Hollow Formation1
- Peace River Formation · Hawthorn Group1
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The named rock units Protoreodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Protoreodon and its relatives
MioceneWhere Protoreodon and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
656 taxa- Brontotheriidae18 sites
- Epihippus gracilis16 sites
- Sespedectes singularis16 sites
- Pareumys15 sites
- Trionychidae15 sites
- Proterixoides davisi13 sites
- Simimys simplex13 sites
- Amynodon advenus12 sites
- Duchesneodus uintensis11 sites
- Herpetotherium knighti11 sites
- Peradectes californicus11 sites
- Bridgeremys pusilla10 sites
- Testudinidae10 sites
- Diplobunops matthewi9 sites
- Griphomys alecer9 sites
- Leptoreodon9 sites
- Leptoreodon stocki9 sites
- Simimeryx hudsoni9 sites
- Testudines9 sites
- Uintaparamys9 sites
- Dyseolemur pacificus8 sites
- Heteraletes leotanus8 sites
- Protylopus petersoni8 sites
- Protylopus stocki8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 98 sites for Protoreodon, 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
35 references- The Early-Late Hemphillian (Hh2) Faunal Assemblage From Juchipila Basin, State of Zacatecas, Mexico, and Its Biochronologic Correlation with Other Hemphillian Faunas in Central Mexico6
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals2
- Ursidae2
- Late Tertiary Canids from Central Mexico2
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Ogallala Group in Nebraska2
- Preliminary observations on Carnivora from the Sahabi Formation (Libya)2
- Late Cenozoic Mammals from Northwestern Mexico2
- Ecological and temporal placement of early Pliocene hominids at Aramis, Ethiopia1
- Una nueva localidad del henfiliano tardio en la mesa central de Mexico1
- Un nouveau rongeur Mystromys pocockei sp. nov. (Cricetinae) de Pliocene inferieur de Langebaanweg (Region du Cap, Afrique du Sud)1
- Discovery of Late Miocene Agriotherium from Jiegou, Gansu, and its taxonomic implications1
- Blancan, Irvingtonian, and Rancholabrean(?) land mammal age faunas from western Riverside County, California1
Each of the 46 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. 23 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 Protoreodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Natural History Museum, London
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Protoreodon 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 itAgriochoeridae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Scott 1898