Didymictis
Didymictis is an extinct genus of placental mammals from the extinct subfamily Didymictinae within the extinct family Viverravidae, that lived in North America and Europe from the Late Paleocene to Middle Eocene.

M. Fox · CC0 · 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
- ViverravidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Viverravidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 57.5 Mya to 45.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 60.9 Mya to 39.7 Mya.
350 occurrences of Didymictis on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
350 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
20 formations
- Willwood Formation183
- Fort Union Formation26
- DeBeque Formation24
- Wasatch Formation20
- Wind River Formation13
- San Jose Formation3
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The named rock units Didymictis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 63 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Didymictis and its relatives
EoceneWhere Didymictis and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
714 taxa- Coryphodon101 sites
- Ectocion osbornianus93 sites
- Hyopsodus82 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani77 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius72 sites
- Sifrhippus grangeri57 sites
- Viverravus acutus53 sites
- Diacodexis52 sites
- Esthonyx bisulcatus52 sites
- Paramys copei51 sites
- Paramys excavatus46 sites
- Thryptacodon antiquus45 sites
- Phenacolemurinae41 sites
- Phenacodus40 sites
- Prototomus38 sites
- Vulpavus australis38 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus37 sites
- Cantius abditus34 sites
- Viverravus32 sites
- Hyracotherium30 sites
- Cantius29 sites
- Homogalax protapirinus29 sites
- Prodiacodon tauricinerei29 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus28 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 335 sites for Didymictis, 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
39 references- Ancestry and Species Definition in Paleontology: A Stratocladistic Analysis of Paleocene-Eocene Viverravidae (Mammalia, Carnivora) from Wyoming88
- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary58
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals44
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary40
- Faunal Zonation of the Willwood Formation in the Central Bighorn Basin, Wyoming39
- The Tiffanian Land-Mammal Age (middle and late Paleocene) in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming18
- Earliest Eocene mammalian fauna from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum at Sand Creek Divide, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming12
- Distribution and stratigraphic correlation of upper Paleocene and lower Eocene fossil mammal and plant localities of the Fort Union, Willwood, and Tatman formations, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming4
- Revision of the Wind River faunas, early Eocene of central Wyoming. Part 5. Geology and biostratigraphy of the upper part of the Wind River Formation, northeastern Wind River Basin4
- Geology and mammalian paleontology of the New Fork-Big Sandy area, Sublette County, Wyoming4
- Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Piceance Creek Basin. Northwestern Colorado3
- A Further Study Of The Lower Eocene Mammalian Faunas Of Southwestern Wyoming3
Each of the 350 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. 27 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 content2
Picture of Didymictis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- M. Fox
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Didymictis proteus · CM:VertPaleo:79100
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Didymictis”
- 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 itViverravidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cope 1875