Cynomys gunnisoni
Gunnison's prairie dog is one of five species of prairie dog. This species belongs to the squirrel family of rodents, and are predominantly related to the North American and Eurasian ground squirrels. Gunnison's prairie dogs are primarily distributed in the Four Corners region of the United States.

Uncredited · Public Domain · 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
- Gunnison's prairie dogPBDB
- Sits inside
- CynomysPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- semifossorialPBDB, for Cynomys
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 81 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
3 occurrences of Cynomys gunnisoni 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Cynomys gunnisoni 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.
Cynomys gunnisoni and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cynomys gunnisoni and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
65 taxa- Antilocapra americana2 sites
- Camelops2 sites
- Chaetodipus intermedius2 sites
- Neotoma albigula2 sites
- Sylvilagus audubonii2 sites
- Antrozous pallidus1 site
- Arctodus1 site
- Arvicolinae1 site
- Bison1 site
- Canis latrans1 site
- Canis lupus1 site
- Castor canadensis1 site
- Cervus canadensis merriami1 site
- Citellus1 site
- Cnemidophorus1 site
- Cratogeomys castanops1 site
- Crotalus1 site
- Crotaphytus collaris1 site
- Dipodomys merriami1 site
- Dipodomys ordii1 site
- Dipodomys spectabilis1 site
- Equus1 site
- Equus niobrarensis1 site
- Erethizon dorsatum1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Cynomys gunnisoni, 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
3 references- Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the McPherson Equus Beds (Sandahl Local Fauna), McPherson County, Kansas1
- Pleistocene-Recent fauna of the Isleta Caves, Bernalillo County, New Mexico1
- The archaeological and faunal material from Williams Cave, Guadalupe Mountains, Texas1
Each of the 3 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 Cynomys gunnisoni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- 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 itCynomys through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Baird 1855)