Holochilus brasiliensis
Holochilus brasiliensis, also known as the Brazilian marsh rat or web-footed marsh rat, is a species of semiaquatic rodent from South America. It is found in northeastern Argentina, southern and eastern Brazil and in eastern Uruguay.

Richard Owen · 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- Also called
- Brazilian marsh ratPBDB
- Sits inside
- HolochilusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rodentia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Holochilus brasiliensis 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
7 occurrences- Pleistocene70%
- Holocene30%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Holochilus brasiliensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Holochilus brasiliensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Holochilus brasiliensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
126 taxa- Lama guanicoe4 sites
- Chaetophractus villosus3 sites
- Ctenomys3 sites
- Calomys2 sites
- Calomys callosus2 sites
- Doedicurus clavicaudatus2 sites
- Equus caballus2 sites
- Glyptodon2 sites
- Glyptodon clavipes2 sites
- Macrauchenia patagonica2 sites
- Monodelphis domestica2 sites
- Myocastor coypus2 sites
- Pecari tajacu2 sites
- Phyllostomus2 sites
- Pseudalopex gymnocercus2 sites
- Reithrodon auritus2 sites
- Smilodon populator2 sites
- Thrichomys2 sites
- Zaedyus pichiy2 sites
- Akodon1 site
- Akodon cursor1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anura1 site
- Arctotherium1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Holochilus brasiliensis, 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
6 references- Pre-Hispanic mammal exploitation and hunting strategies in the eastern Pampa subregion of Argentina2
- Quaternary mammals from Serra do Bodoquena, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil1
- La Faune Pleistocene du Piaui (Nordeste du Bresil): Implications Paleoecologiques et Biochronologiques1
- Los vertebrados del Pleistoceno tardío del arroyo Napostá Grande, provincia de Buenos Aires. Aspectos paleoambientales1
- La Unidad Mamifero (Fauna) Lujanense. Proyeccion de la Estratigrafia Mamaliana al Cuaternario de la Region Pampeana1
- Additions to the knowledge on fossil rodents of Uruguay (Mammalia: Rodentia)1
Each of the 7 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 Holochilus brasiliensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Richard Owen
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Holochilus brasiliensis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- 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 itHolochilus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Desmarest 1819)