Erinaceus
Erinaceus is a genus of hedgehog from the family of Erinaceidae. There are four main species of Erinaceus. The range is all across Europe, throughout the Middle East, parts of Russia, and extending to northern China and Korea. The European hedgehog has been introduced to New Zealand.

No machine-readable author provided. DarkAngel~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). · 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
- ErinaceinaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Erinaceidae
- Life habit
- semifossorialPBDB, for Erinaceidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 8.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 8.725 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
97 occurrences of Erinaceus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
97 occurrences- Miocene8%
- Pliocene17%
- Pleistocene68%
- Holocene7%
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
10 formations
- Nubia Formation2
- Lefkon Formation2
- Bahe Formation2
- Koobi Fora Formation1
- C1/LR Formation1
- Platanochori Formation1
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The named rock units Erinaceus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 84 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Erinaceus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Erinaceus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,442 taxa- Lepus34 sites
- Mimomys33 sites
- Beremendia fissidens29 sites
- Equus28 sites
- Microtus27 sites
- Allocricetus26 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus26 sites
- Myodes26 sites
- Pliomys24 sites
- Apodemus23 sites
- Sorex23 sites
- Sorex minutus23 sites
- Myotis22 sites
- Crocidura21 sites
- Petenyia hungarica19 sites
- Citellus18 sites
- Arvicola17 sites
- Cricetus cricetus17 sites
- Rana17 sites
- Sus scrofa17 sites
- Talpa fossilis17 sites
- Aves16 sites
- Canis lupus16 sites
- Ochotona16 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 92 sites for Erinaceus, 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
64 references- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary11
- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung8
- The Pliocene and Pleistocene Insectivores (Mammalia) of Poland I. Erinaceidae and Desmaninae6
- I giacimenti Quaternari di vertebrati fossili nell'Italia Nord-Orientale4
- The small mammals of the Guela Cave3
- Biochronological implications of the Arvicolidae (Rodentia, Mammalia) from the Lower Pleistocene hominid-bearing level of Trinchera Dolina 6 (TD6, Atapuerca, Spain)2
- Le gisement Pleistocene moyen et superieur d'Artenac (Saint-Mary, Charent): premier bilan interdisciplinaire2
- Biochronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Betfia (Bihor, Romania)2
- Early Pleistocene Insectivora (Mammalia) from Tourkobounia (Athens, Greece)2
- Wendorf and Schild, 19802
- New microstratigraphic horizons in the vertebrate chronology of the Hungarian Pleistocene2
- The Villafranchian mammalian faunas and biochronology of Greece1
Each of the 97 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. 52 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 content3
Picture of Erinaceus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- No machine-readable author provided. DarkAngel~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims).
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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
- Erinaceus europaeus · zmuc:cn:ZMUC-M03-3856
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Erinaceus”
- 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 itErinaceinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758