Blastocerus dichotomus
The marsh deer is a species of deer native to South America. It is the largest living species of South American deer. It is the only species in the genus Blastocerus.

Jonathan Wilkins · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Also called
- marsh deerPBDB
- Sits inside
- BlastocerusPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Cervidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Cervidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Blastocerus dichotomus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
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.
Blastocerus dichotomus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Blastocerus dichotomus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
22 taxa- Cavia aperea1 site
- Dicolpomys fossor1 site
- Diplodon1 site
- Euphractus sexcinctus1 site
- Glossotherium robustum1 site
- Glyptodon clavipes1 site
- Gomphotheriidae1 site
- Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris1 site
- Lestodon armatus1 site
- Macrauchenia patagonica1 site
- Megatherium americanum1 site
- Morenelaphus brachyceros1 site
- Mylodon1 site
- Myocastor coypus1 site
- Ozotoceros bezoarticus1 site
- Palaeolama1 site
- Pampatherium1 site
- Panochthus tuberculatus1 site
- Scelidotherium1 site
- Sclerocalyptus ornatus1 site
- Sigmodontinae1 site
- Toxodon1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Blastocerus dichotomus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- Occurrence of Dicolpomys (Echimyidae) in the late Holocene of Argentina: The most recently extinct South American caviomorph genus1
- Hoffstetter, 19781
Each of the 2 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 Blastocerus dichotomus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Wilkins
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Blastocerus dichotomus 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, “Marsh deer”
- 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 itBlastocerus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Illiger 1815)