Anthracobunidae
Anthracobunidae is an extinct family of stem perissodactyls that lived in the early to middle Eocene period. They were originally considered to be a paraphyletic family of primitive proboscideans possibly ancestral to the Moeritheriidae and the desmostylians. The family has also thought to be ancestral to the Sirenia.

Uncredited · 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
- PerissodactylaPBDB
- Diet
- browser, grazerPBDB, for Perissodactyla
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Perissodactyla
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 19 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 37.71 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
28 occurrences of Anthracobunidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
28 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
3 formations
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The named rock units Anthracobunidae 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.
Anthracobunidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Anthracobunidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
78 taxa- Anthracobune pinfoldi9 sites
- Anthracobune wardi7 sites
- Khirtharia dayi6 sites
- Ichthyolestes pinfoldi4 sites
- Obergfellia occidentalis3 sites
- Bagridae2 sites
- Basalina basalensis2 sites
- Basalomys ijlsti2 sites
- Birbalomys sondaari2 sites
- Chapattimys wilsoni2 sites
- Eotitanops dayi2 sites
- Gumbatomys asifi2 sites
- Indohyus indirae2 sites
- Osteoglossidae2 sites
- Pakicetus attocki2 sites
- Pakicetus inachus2 sites
- Pakotitanops latidentatus2 sites
- Paratritemnodon indicus2 sites
- Planorbis2 sites
- Agerinia1 site
- Anchichanna kuldanensis1 site
- Anthracobune1 site
- Anthracobune aijiensis1 site
- Anthracobune daviesi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Anthracobunidae, 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- Anthracobunids from the Middle Eocene of India and Pakistan are stem perissodactyls11
- Middle Eocene Mammals from North-west India4
- Paläontologische und geologische Untersuchungen im Tertiär von Pakistan3
- Astragalus of Anthracobune (Mammalia, Proboscidea) from the Early-Middle Eocene of Kashmir2
- Origin of whales in epicontinental remnant seas: New evidence from the early Eocene of Pakistan2
- Anthracobune aijiensis nov. sp. (Mammalia: Proboscidea) from the Subathu Formation, Eocene from NW Himalaya, India1
- Review of Eocene Anthracobunidae (Mammalia, Proboscidea) with a new genus and species, Jozaria palustris, from the Kuldana Formation of Kohat (Pakistan)1
- Lower Eocene Sirenia, Ishatherium subathuensis, gen. et sp. nov. from the type area, Subathu Formation, Subathu, Simla Himalayas, H. P.1
- Reconnaissance survey and vertebrate paleontology of some Paleocene and Eocene Formations in Pakistan1
- A small collection of fossil vertebrates from the middle Eocene Kuldana and Kohat Formations of Punjab (Pakistan)1
- Three new Eocene mammals from Rajauri District, Jammu and Kashmir1
Each of the 28 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 Anthracobunidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Anthracobunidae 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.
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 itPerissodactyla through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wells and Gingerich 1983