Birkamys
Birkamys is an extinct monotypic genus of phiomorph rodent that lived in North Africa during the Priabonian stage of the Eocene epoch.

Hesham M. Sallam and Erik R. Seiffert · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- HystricognathiPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 6.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 33.9 Mya and 27.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Birkamys on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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- Oligocene100%
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
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The named rock units Birkamys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Birkamys and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Birkamys and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
52 taxa- Gaudeamus aslius2 sites
- Gaudeamus hylaeus2 sites
- Mubhammys atlanticus2 sites
- Neophiomys minutus2 sites
- Nonanomalurus parvus2 sites
- Paranomalurus riodeoroensis2 sites
- Phenacophiomys occidentalis2 sites
- Aframonius dieides1 site
- Akhnatenavus nefertiticyon1 site
- Anchomomys milleri1 site
- Antilohyrax pectidens1 site
- Apterodon1 site
- Argouburus minutus1 site
- Arsinoea kallimos1 site
- Arsinoitherium1 site
- Artiodactyla1 site
- Brychotherium ephalmos1 site
- Bunohyrax1 site
- Catopithecus browni1 site
- Ciconiidae1 site
- Creodonta1 site
- Dakhlamys ultimus1 site
- Dhofarella sigei1 site
- Eremopezus eocaenus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Birkamys, 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
2 references- Earliest Oligocene hystricognathous rodents from the Atlantic margin of northwestern Saharan Africa (Dakhla, Morocco): systematic, paleobiogeographical, and paleoenvironmental implications2
- New phiomorph rodents from the latest Eocene of Egypt, and the impact of Bayesian "clock"-based phylogenetic methods on estimates of basal hystricognath relationships and biochronology2
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 Birkamys
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Hesham M. Sallam and Erik R. Seiffert
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Birkamys 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, “Birkamys”
- 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 itHystricognathi through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sallam and Seiffert 2016