Dipodomys

Searched as Dipodomys cf. agilus. The Paleobiology Database treats Dipodomys as the accepted name.

Kangaroo rats, small mostly nocturnal rodents of genus Dipodomys, are native to arid areas of western North America. The common name derives from their bipedal form. They hop in a manner similar to the much larger kangaroo, but developed this mode of locomotion independently, like several other clades of rodents.

Dipodomys

Juan Cruzado Cortés · 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
kangaroo ratPBDB
Sits inside
DipodomyinaePBDB
Diet
granivorePBDB
Life habit
saltatorialPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 196 thousand years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 14 ka, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 1 occurrencePleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences710 ka0 Mya

1 occurrence of Dipodomys on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

1 occurrences

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.

Dipodomys and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Dipodomys and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

652 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 121 sites for Dipodomys, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Dipodomys

Credit
Juan Cruzado Cortés
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itDipodomyinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1841