Gobiconodon

Gobiconodon is an extinct genus of carnivorous mammals belonging to the family Gobiconodontidae. Undisputed records of Gobiconodon are restricted to the Early Cretaceous of Asia and North America, but isolated teeth attributed to the genus have also been described from formations in England and Morocco dating as far back as the Middle Jurassic. Species of Gobiconodon varied considerably in size, with G. ostromi, one of the larger species, being around the size of a modern Virginia opossum. Like other gobiconodontids, it possessed several speciations towards carnivory, such as shearing molariform teeth, large canine-like incisors and powerful jaw and forelimb musculature, indicating that it probably fed on vertebrate prey. Unusually among predatory mammals and other eutriconodonts, the lower canines were vestigial, with the first lower incisor pair having become massive and canine-like. Like the larger Repenomamus there might be some evidence of scavenging.

Gobiconodon

Bloopityboop · 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
Sits inside
GobiconodontidaePBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At least 133 million years on record.

The record covers at least 137.05 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 0 of 22 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 20 of 22 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 22 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 22 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 22 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 22 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 22 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 22 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 22 occurrences146–141 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences141–136 Mya — about 2 occurrences136–131 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences126–122 Mya — about 5 occurrences122–117 Mya — about 6 occurrences117–112 Mya — about 4 occurrences112–107 Mya — about 1 occurrence107–102 Mya — about 1 occurrence102–97 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences97–92 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.9–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence137.05 Mya3.6 Mya146 Mya0 Mya

22 occurrences of Gobiconodon on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

22 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.

Found in

10 formations

Ilek — 55.90°N, 87.96°EIlek — 56.53°N, 91.81°ECloverly — 45.44°N, 108.24°WCloverly — 45.20°N, 108.81°WCloverly — 44.51°N, 107.90°WDzunbain — 42.45°N, 102.42°EYixian — 41.60°N, 120.91°EYixian — 41.78°N, 120.76°EOshih — 44.90°N, 102.89°EArtoles — 40.82°N, 0.28°WLillo — 51.21°N, 4.43°EWessex — 50.66°N, 1.13°WShahai — 41.81°N, 121.99°EFuxin — 42.02°N, 121.67°E

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The named rock units Gobiconodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Gobiconodon and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Gobiconodon and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

300 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Gobiconodon, 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

16 references

Each of the 22 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. 4 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 Gobiconodon

Credit
Bloopityboop
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gobiconodon was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource was 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 itGobiconodontidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Trofimov 1978