Anisolophus
Anisolophus is an extinct genus of proterotheriid from the Early to Middle Miocene of Argentina. The genus was named by Burmeister in 1885 to accommodate the species Anchitherium australe, which they had named earlier in 1879. Soria then referred the species Licaphrium floweri and Anisolophus minisculus to the genus, making Licaphrium, named in 1887 by Florentino Ameghino, a junior synonym of the genus. Both A. australis and A. floweri are known from the Santacrucian age Santa Cruz Formation, while A. minisculus is known from the Collón Curá Formation.

Hatcher, J. B. (John Bell), 1861-1904; Scott, William Berryman, 1858-1947 · Public Domain · 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
- ProterotheriidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Litopterna
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 6.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 13.82 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Anisolophus 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
4 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
2 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation3
- Cerro Boleadoras Formation · Río Zeballos Group1
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The named rock units Anisolophus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Anisolophus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Anisolophus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
103 taxa- Acarechimys minutissimus3 sites
- Acarechimys minutus3 sites
- Caviomorpha3 sites
- Hegetotherium mirabile3 sites
- Interatherium3 sites
- Neoreomys australis3 sites
- Pachyrukhos moyani3 sites
- Perimys3 sites
- Pliolagostomus notatus3 sites
- Protypotherium3 sites
- Steiromys3 sites
- Stichomys3 sites
- Acarechimys2 sites
- Acarechimys gracilis2 sites
- Astrapotherium2 sites
- Cladosictis patagonica2 sites
- Eocardia2 sites
- Eocardia montana2 sites
- Homalodotherium2 sites
- Neoreomys2 sites
- Nesodon2 sites
- Octodontoidea2 sites
- Palaeothentes lemoinei2 sites
- Palaeothentes minutus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Anisolophus, 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- Litopterna (Mammalia) From the Santa Cruz Formation (Early-Middle Miocene) At the Río Santa Cruz, Southern Argentina2
- Fossil vertebrates of the early-middle Miocene Cerro Boleadoras Formation, northwestern Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina1
- Sedimentology and fossil vertebrates of the Santa Cruz formation (early Miocene) in Lago Posadas, southwestern Patagonia, Argentina1
Each of the 4 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Anisolophus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hatcher, J. B. (John Bell), 1861-1904; Scott, William Berryman, 1858-1947
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anisolophus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Anisolophus”
- 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 itProterotheriidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Burmeister 1885