Gracilocyon
Gracilocyon is an extinct paraphyletic genus of placental mammals from clade Carnivoraformes, that lived in North America and Europe from the late Paleocene to the early Eocene.

Smith Thierry, Smith Richard, · 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
- CarnivoraformesPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Theria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 59.24 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
14 occurrences of Gracilocyon 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
14 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
5 formations
- Willwood Formation9
- Tienen Formation · Landen Group2
- Tuscahoma Formation1
- Jibou Formation1
- Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais Formation1
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The named rock units Gracilocyon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Gracilocyon and its relatives
EoceneWhere Gracilocyon and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
287 taxa- Hyopsodus loomisi6 sites
- Ectocion osbornianus5 sites
- Allognathosuchus4 sites
- Aves4 sites
- Coryphodon eocaenus4 sites
- Diacodexis metsiacus4 sites
- Haplomylus speirianus4 sites
- Lepisosteus4 sites
- Melanosaurus maximus4 sites
- Paramys taurus4 sites
- Amia3 sites
- Arctodontomys wilsoni3 sites
- Arfia gingerichi3 sites
- Arfia junnei3 sites
- Copecion davisi3 sites
- Coryphodon3 sites
- Crocodylia3 sites
- Diacodexis3 sites
- Dormaalocyon latouri3 sites
- Esthonyx spatularius3 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius3 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani3 sites
- Phenacolemurinae3 sites
- Rodentia3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Gracilocyon, 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
9 references- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary4
- New earliest Wasatchian mammalian fauna from the Eocene of northwestern Wyoming: composition and diversity in a rarely sampled high-floodplain assemblage3
- New carnivoraforms from the latest Paleocene of Europe and their bearing on the origin and radiation of Carnivoraformes (Carnivoramorpha, Mammalia)1
- The earliest Eocene mammal fauna of the Erquelinnes Sand Member near the French-Belgian border1
- The “miacids” (Carnivoraformes, Mammalia) from the Early Eocene locality of Le Quesnoy (MP7, France); first occurrence of Vassacyon in Europe1
- Earliest Eocene mammalian fauna from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum at Sand Creek Divide, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming1
- A new genus of "miacid" carnivoran from the earliest Eocene of Europe and North America1
- Early Wasatchian mammals of the Red Hot local fauna, uppermost Tuscahoma Formation, Lauderdale County, Mississippi1
- Paleocene-Eocene faunal zones and a preliminary analysis of Laramide structural deformation in the Clarks Fork Basin, Wyoming1
Each of the 14 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 Gracilocyon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Smith Thierry, Smith Richard,
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Gracilocyon 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gracilocyon”
- 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 itCarnivoraformes through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Smith and Smith 2010