Bovoidea
Bovoidea is a superfamily of pecoran ruminants containing the Bovidae and Moschidae. The Bovoidea today is defined in part by very specific dental and anatomical traits, and genetic research indicates that the Moschidae is the sister taxon to the Bovidae.

TEkman73 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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- Sits inside
- PecoraPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Artiodactyla
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Artiodactyla
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At least 41 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.
6,596 occurrences of Bovoidea 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
6,596 occurrencesThese 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
263 formations
- Koobi Fora Formation · Omo Group652
- Nachukui Formation · Omo Group285
- Shungura Formation · Omo Group278
- Vogel River Series Formation124
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group122
- Olduvai Formation · Vogel River Series Group116
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The named rock units Bovoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 239 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 3,325 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Bovoidea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Bovoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,171 taxa- Equus69 sites
- Camelidae32 sites
- Bison25 sites
- Mammuthus24 sites
- Blastomerycinae23 sites
- Gazella23 sites
- Longirostromeryx wellsi23 sites
- Bison latifrons22 sites
- Blastomeryx gemmifer22 sites
- Camelops22 sites
- Canis latrans20 sites
- Mammuthus columbi20 sites
- Paramylodon harlani20 sites
- Hipparion19 sites
- Mylagaulidae19 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus19 sites
- Aelurodon ferox18 sites
- Equidae18 sites
- Eucastor tortus17 sites
- Aenocyon dirus16 sites
- Odocoileus16 sites
- Aphelops megalodus15 sites
- Archaeolaginae15 sites
- Epicyon saevus15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 593 sites for Bovoidea, and this reads 240 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
1,033 references- Family Bovidae568
- Stratigraphy and Paleontology of pliocene and Pleistocene Localities West of Lake Turkana, Kenya244
- Laetoli: a Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania124
- Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Implications of Late Holocene Archaeological Faunas from the Orange Free State and North Central Cape Province, South Africa104
- Lothagam: the dawn of humanity in eastern Africa75
- Implications of Late Quaternary mammalian fauna from Lukenya Hill (South-Central Kenya) for paleoenvironmental change and faunal extinctions74
- The Omo Group: Archives of the International Omo Research Expedition71
- Kom Ombo: Preliminary Report on the Fauna of Late Paleolithic Sites in Upper Egypt67
- Later Stone Age Faunal Samples from Heuningneskrans Shelter (Transvaal) and Leopard's Hill Cave (Zambia)64
- Extinct large Colobines from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa64
- Large mammal fossil occurrences and associated archaeological evidence in Pleistocene contexts of peninsular India and Sri Lanka59
- The Omo Micromammals: Systematics and Paleoecology of Early Man Sites from Ethiopia54
Each of the 6,596 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. 1,021 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 Bovoidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- TEkman73
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bovoidea 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, “Bovoidea”
- 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 itPecora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821