Dugongidae
Searched as Dugong. The Paleobiology Database treats Dugongidae as the accepted name.

Julien Willem · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- dugongPBDB
- Sits inside
- SireniaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Sirenia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Sirenia
Time the record covers
At least 41 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.
642 occurrences of Dugongidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
642 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
142 formations
- Birket Qarun Formation20
- Pirabas Formation16
- Burgeschleinitz Formation16
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group15
- Monterey Formation15
- Chandler Bridge Formation · Cooper Group11
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Dugongidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 118 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 268 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dugongidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Dugongidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,718 taxa- Metaxytherium26 sites
- Sirenia26 sites
- Metaxytherium krahuletzi21 sites
- Odontoceti20 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis18 sites
- Hemipristis serra18 sites
- Otodus megalodon16 sites
- Hydrodamalis cuestae14 sites
- Myliobatis14 sites
- Carcharhinus13 sites
- Mysticeti13 sites
- Prototherium12 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus11 sites
- Balaenopteridae10 sites
- Cetacea10 sites
- Crocodylia10 sites
- Metaxytherium medium10 sites
- Physeteridae10 sites
- Crenatosiren olseni9 sites
- Metaxytherium crataegense9 sites
- Rhinocerotidae9 sites
- Aves8 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus8 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 555 sites for Dugongidae, 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
275 references- Late Eocene sea cows (Mammalia, Sirenia) from Wadi al Hitan in the western desert of Fayum, Egypt31
- Sirenian evolution in the North Pacific Ocean29
- Pilleri et al., 198919
- Metaxytherium serresii (Mammalia: Sirenia) from the early Pliocene of Libya and France: A Reevaluation of its morphology, phyletic position, and biostratigraphic and paleoecological significance19
- Pilleri, 198719
- The sirenian Metaxytherium (Mammalia: Dugongidae) in the Badenian (Middle Miocene) of Central Europe16
- The osteology and relationships of Metaxytherium krahuletzi Deperet, 1895 (Mammalia, Sirenia)15
- New sirenian findings from Crete Island14
- Evolution of the North Pacific Sirenia (Hydrodamalinae) and their paleoenvironment14
- Systematics, biostratigraphy and evolutionary pattern of the Oligo-Miocene marine mammals from the Maltese Islands12
- Localidades fossiliferas da Formacao Pirabas (Mioceno Inferior)10
- Fossil Sirenia of the West Atlantic and Caribbeaan Region. VIII. Nanosiren garciae, gen. et sp. nov. and Nanosiren sanchezi, sp. nov.10
Each of the 642 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. 263 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 Dugongidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Julien Willem
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itSirenia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821