Eutypomyidae
Eutypomyidae is a family of extinct rodents from the Eocene to Miocene of North America, often considered the sister taxon to beavers (Castoridae). Eutypomyids lived from the Wasatchian NALMA up to the Arikareean NALMA.

Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington · Public Domain · 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
- CastoroideaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 39.7 Mya to 24.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 45.9 Mya to 18.5 Mya.
53 occurrences of Eutypomyidae 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
53 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
14 formations
- Cypress Hills Formation8
- Brule Formation8
- Renova Formation6
- Chadron Formation5
- Uinta Formation3
- Chambers Tuff Formation2
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The named rock units Eutypomyidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Eutypomyidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Eutypomyidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
782 taxa- Hesperocyon gregarius14 sites
- Brontotheriidae13 sites
- Leptomeryx11 sites
- Paradjidaumo trilophus11 sites
- Eomyidae10 sites
- Castoridae9 sites
- Daphoenus9 sites
- Leptictidae9 sites
- Didelphidae8 sites
- Domnina8 sites
- Ectypodus lovei8 sites
- Hesperocyon8 sites
- Adjidaumo minimus7 sites
- Aulolithomys bounites7 sites
- Centetodon magnus7 sites
- Chiroptera7 sites
- Eutypomys thomsoni7 sites
- Herpetotherium fugax7 sites
- Ischyromys typus7 sites
- Ischyromys veterior7 sites
- Merycoidodon culbertsonii7 sites
- Palaeolagus temnodon7 sites
- Peltosaurus7 sites
- Pseudocylindrodon neglectus7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 49 sites for Eutypomyidae, 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
35 references- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals9
- The Rodents of the Lac Pelletier Lower Fauna, Late Eocene (Duchesnean) of Saskatchewan4
- Magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, southwestern Montana3
- Geometric morphometrics and anatomical network analyses reveal ecospace partitioning among geoemydid turtles from the Uinta Formation, Utah2
- Eocene-Oligocene faunas of the Cypress Hills Formation, Saskatchewan2
- Analysis of the Preservation of Community Structure in Assemblages of Fossil Mammals2
- Stratigraphic Occurrence and Correlation of Early Tertiary Vertebrate Faunas Trans-Pecos Texas. Part I: Vieja Area2
- Early Tertiary vertebrate faunas, Vieja Group Trans-Pecos Texas: Rodentia2
- A new species of Eutypomys Matthew (Rodentia, Eutypomyidae) from the Orellan (Oligocene) and reevaluation of “Eutypomys” magnus Wood1
- John Day Basin paleontology field trip guide and road log: Society of Vertebrate Paleontology1
- Additions to the mammalian paleofauna of Saskatchewan1
- A new genus of eutypomyid (Mammalia: Rodentia) from the middle Eocene of the Texas Gulf Coast1
Each of the 53 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. 23 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 content1
Picture of Eutypomyidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Eutypomyidae was found in Sketchfab.
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 itCastoroidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Miller and Gidley 1918