Diplomesodon
Diplomesodon is a genus of shrew that contains a single extant species, the piebald shrew (Diplomesodon pulchellus).

Николай Усик / http://paradoxusik.livejournal.com/ · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- CrociduriniPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Soricidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Soricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Diplomesodon on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Pliocene100%
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 Diplomesodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Diplomesodon and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Diplomesodon and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
38 taxa- Elephantulus3 sites
- Acomys2 sites
- Amblysomus2 sites
- Cryptomys hottentotus2 sites
- Dasymys2 sites
- Dendromus2 sites
- Elephantulus brachyrhynchus2 sites
- Epimys (Aethomys)2 sites
- Eptesicus2 sites
- Graphiurus2 sites
- Hyaena hyaena2 sites
- Malacothrix2 sites
- Miniopterus2 sites
- Mus2 sites
- Mystromys2 sites
- Otomys2 sites
- Praomys2 sites
- Pronolagus2 sites
- Proodontomys cookei2 sites
- Rhabdomys2 sites
- Rhinolophus2 sites
- Rhinolophus clivosus2 sites
- Steatomys2 sites
- Suncus varilla2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Diplomesodon, 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- The Makapansgat australopithecine environment1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil mammalian microfauna of southern Africa: a preliminary report including descriptions of two new fossil muroid genera (Mammalia: Rodentia)1
- An extinct shrew from the early Pleistocene of South Africa1
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 content2
Picture of Diplomesodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Николай Усик / http://paradoxusik.livejournal.com/
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Diplomesodon pulchellum · FMNH:Mammals:137436
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itCrocidurini through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brandt 1952