Damaliscus lunatus
Damaliscus lunatus is a large African antelope of the genus Damaliscus and subfamily Alcelaphinae in the family Bovidae, with a number of recognised geographic subspecies. Some authorities have split the different populations of the species into different species, although this is seen as controversial. Common names include topi, sassaby, tiang and tsessebe.

Charles J. Sharp · 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- Also called
- common tsessebePBDB
- Sits inside
- DamaliscusPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Bovidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Bovidae
- 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.
12 occurrences of Damaliscus lunatus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
12 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.
Found in
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Damaliscus lunatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Damaliscus lunatus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Damaliscus lunatus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
200 taxa- Hippotragus equinus8 sites
- Phacochoerus aethiopicus8 sites
- Potamochoerus porcus8 sites
- Suidae8 sites
- Aepyceros melampus7 sites
- Bovidae7 sites
- Equus quagga burchelli7 sites
- Tragelaphus strepsiceros7 sites
- Ourebia ourebi6 sites
- Syncerus caffer6 sites
- Alcelaphus5 sites
- Canis5 sites
- Eudorcas thomsoni5 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius5 sites
- Lepus5 sites
- Mammalia5 sites
- Mellivora capensis5 sites
- Orycteropus afer5 sites
- Panthera leo5 sites
- Sylvicapra grimmia5 sites
- Taurotragus oryx5 sites
- Alcelaphini4 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus4 sites
- Caracal caracal4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Damaliscus lunatus, 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
5 references- Later Stone Age Faunal Samples from Heuningneskrans Shelter (Transvaal) and Leopard's Hill Cave (Zambia)5
- Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers at Ishango (eastern Zaire): the faunal evidence3
- The Late Prehistory of the Eastern Sahel2
- Mid-Pleistocene change in large mammal faunas of East Africa1
- Taphonomy, Paleoecology, and Hominids of Lainyamok, Kenya1
Each of the 12 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 content2
Picture of Damaliscus lunatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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
- 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 itDamaliscus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Burchell 1823)