Colpoclaenus

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- ArctocyonidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Arctocyonidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Arctocyonidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 5.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 63.4 Mya and 57.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
17 occurrences of Colpoclaenus on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
17 occurrences- Paleocene100%
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
6 formations
- Paskapoo Formation6
- Nacimiento Formation3
- Fort Union Formation3
- Coalspur Formation1
- Ohio Creek Formation1
- Black Peaks Formation · Tornillo Group1
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The named rock units Colpoclaenus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Colpoclaenus and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Colpoclaenus and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
265 taxa- Ptilodus8 sites
- Arctocyon ferox7 sites
- Bessoecetor septentrionalis6 sites
- Carpodaptes hazelae6 sites
- Elpidophorus elegans6 sites
- Mesodma pygmaea6 sites
- Neoplagiaulax6 sites
- Neoplagiaulax hunteri6 sites
- Anconodon cochranensis5 sites
- Chriacus pelvidens5 sites
- Ectypodus5 sites
- Peradectes5 sites
- Anisonchus sectorius4 sites
- Chriacus4 sites
- Ectocion collinus4 sites
- Ignacius frugivorus4 sites
- Leptacodon munusculum4 sites
- Leptacodon tener4 sites
- Litomylus dissentaneus4 sites
- Mimetodon silberlingi4 sites
- Pantolambda cavirictus4 sites
- Peradectes elegans4 sites
- Periptychus carinidens4 sites
- Promioclaenus acolytus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Colpoclaenus, 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
10 references- Late Cretaceous and Paleocene mammal localities of southern Alberta5
- Paleocene vertebrate paleontology of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico3
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals2
- A New Late Paleocene Vertebrate Fauna from the Ohio Creek Formation of Western Colorado1
- Late Torrejonian (middle Paleocene) mammals from south central Alberta, Canada1
- The succession of Paleocene mammals in western Canada1
- The biogeographic origins of late Paleocene - early Eocene mammalian immigrants to the Western Interior of North America1
- Evolutionary History of Microsyopoidea (Mammalia, ?Primates) and the Relationship Between Plesiadapiformes and Primates1
- The beginning of the Age of Mammals1
- Early Tertiary mammals1
Each of the 17 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 Colpoclaenus
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Colpoclaenus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itArctocyonidae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Patterson and McGrew 1962