Bensonomys

President and Fellows of Harvard College · CC BY-NC 4.0 · via GBIF. 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
- NeotominaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 3.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 4.7 Mya to 1.4 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 9.4 Mya to 210 ka.
54 occurrences of Bensonomys on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
54 occurrences- Miocene30%
- Pliocene44%
- Pleistocene26%
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
- St. David Formation5
- Rexroad Formation5
- Rancho Viejo Beds Formation3
- Verde Formation3
- Temecula Arkose Formation3
- Bidahochi Formation2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Bensonomys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Bensonomys and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Bensonomys and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
531 taxa- Platygonus18 sites
- Sigmodon minor18 sites
- Equus15 sites
- Perognathinae14 sites
- Camelops12 sites
- Nannippus peninsulatus12 sites
- Spermophilus12 sites
- Antilocapridae11 sites
- Borophagus11 sites
- Gomphotheriidae11 sites
- Hemiauchenia11 sites
- Thamnophis11 sites
- Camelidae10 sites
- Geomyidae9 sites
- Peromyscus9 sites
- Plesippus simplicidens9 sites
- Baiomys8 sites
- Bufo7 sites
- Hypolagus ringoldensis7 sites
- Neotoma7 sites
- Neotoma (Paraneotoma) sawrockensis7 sites
- Pleiolama vera7 sites
- Prodipodomys7 sites
- Geomys (Nerterogeomys) minor6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 47 sites for Bensonomys, 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
18 references- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals32
- Cricetid rodents from the Rancho El Ocote fauna, late Hemphillian (Pliocene), State of Guanajuato3
- Small mammal fossils and correlation of continental deposits, Safford and Duncan basins, Arizona3
- Pliocene small mammal fossils from Chihuahua, Mexico2
- Lagomorpha and Rodentia of the early Hemphillian (late Miocene) Mulholland localities, Contra Costa County, California, USA1
- A new species of Bensonomys (Rodentia, Cricetidae) from the early late Hemphillian (late Miocene), Coal Valley Formation, Smith Valley, Nevada1
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1
- Late Neogene (late Hemphillian) rodents from the Pipe Creek Sinkhole, Grant County, Indiana1
- Biostratigraphy of Blancan and Irvingtonian mammals in the Fish Creek-Vallecito Creek section, southern California, and a review of the Blancan-Irvingtonian boundary1
- DAY 2, STOP 4: Lacustrine facies of the Mulholland Fm. (Upper Miocene, Upper Contra Costa Group), Moraga, Central California1
- Mammals of the Wolf Ranch Local Fauna, Pliocene of the San Pedro Valley, Arizona1
- Magnetic Polarity Stratigraphy of Pliocene-Pleistocene Terrestrial Deposits and Vertebrate Faunas, San Pedro Valley, Arizona1
Each of the 54 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. 6 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 Bensonomys
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- President and Fellows of Harvard College
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itNeotominae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gazin 1942)