Hylobates
The genus Hylobates is one of the four genera of gibbons. Its name means "forest walker", from the Greek hūlē and bates.

Magnus Duus Asmussen · 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
- HylobatidaePBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, folivorePBDB, for Hylobatidae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Hylobatidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
6 occurrences of Hylobates 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene99%
- Holocene2%
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.
Hylobates and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Hylobates and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
115 taxa- Macaca5 sites
- Arctonyx collaris4 sites
- Gigantopithecus blacki3 sites
- Hystrix3 sites
- Megalovis3 sites
- Sus3 sites
- Ursus thibetanus3 sites
- Atherurus2 sites
- Bos (Bibos)2 sites
- Caprinae2 sites
- Cervavitus fenqii2 sites
- Cervus2 sites
- Cuon2 sites
- Felis2 sites
- Hippopotamodon2 sites
- Leopoldamys2 sites
- Muntiacus2 sites
- Presbytis2 sites
- Rhinoceros sinensis2 sites
- Rhinoceros unicornis2 sites
- Rhinopithecus2 sites
- Rhizomys2 sites
- Stegodon insignis2 sites
- Stegodon preorientalis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Hylobates, 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- The Middle Pleistocene mammalian fauna from Tam Hang karstic deposit, northern Laos: New data and evolutionary hypothesis1
- New discoveries of Gigantopithecus blacki teeth from Chuifeng Cave in the Bubing Basin, Guangxi, south China1
- A newly discovered Gigantopithecus fauna from Sanhe Cave, Chongzuo, Guangxi, South China1
- Geochronology of Ailuropoda–Stegodon fauna and Gigantopithecus in Guangxi Province, southern China1
- A review of the Pleistocene hominoid fauna of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (excluding Hylobatidae)1
- Prehistoric bone: The gibbons and monkeys of Niah Great Cave1
Each of the 6 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 content2
Picture of Hylobates
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Magnus Duus Asmussen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Hylobates”
- 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 itHylobatidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Illiger 1811