Giraffoidea
Giraffoidea is a superfamily that includes the families Climacoceratidae, Prolibytheriidae, and Giraffidae. The only extant members in the superfamily are the giraffes and okapi. The Climacoceratidae are also placed in the superfamily, but were originally placed within the family Palaeomerycidae.

Hiuppo · CC BY 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
- RuminantiaPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Artiodactyla
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Artiodactyla
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At most 8.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 11.63 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Giraffoidea on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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- Miocene100%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Giraffoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Giraffoidea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Giraffoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
61 taxa- Rhinocerotidae3 sites
- Suidae3 sites
- Bovidae2 sites
- Deinotherium sindiense2 sites
- Gomphotherium2 sites
- Sanitherium schlagintweiti2 sites
- Sivameryx palaeindicus2 sites
- Tragulidae2 sites
- Zygolophodon2 sites
- Aceratherium1 site
- Acrochordus1 site
- Afrohyrax championi1 site
- Afrotragulus parvus1 site
- Anasinopa leakeyi1 site
- Aves1 site
- Brachyodus1 site
- Brachypotherium1 site
- Brochuchus1 site
- Bunolistriodon1 site
- Carcharhinus1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Cyclanorbinae1 site
- Cyprinidae1 site
- Diamontohyus africanus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Giraffoidea, 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- Miocene (~ 14 Ma) Vertebrate‐Yielding Site of Palasava, Kachchh, Gujarat State, Western India: Geoheritage‐Geotourism Perspectives and Geosite Potential1
- A Middle Miocene (~14 Ma) vertebrate assemblage from Palasava, Rapar Taluka, Kutch (Kachchh) District, Gujarat State, western India1
- Miocene mammals, stratigraphy and environment of Muruarot Hill, Kenya1
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 content1
Picture of Giraffoidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hiuppo
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Giraffoidea”
- 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 itRuminantia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821