Isotemnus
Isotemnus is an extinct genus of notoungulate belonging to the family Isotemnidae. It lived from the Late Paleocene to the Middle Eocene of what is now Argentina.

Lmalena · 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
- IsotemnidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Notoungulata
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 14 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 41.03 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 57 Mya to 37.71 Mya.
31 occurrences of Isotemnus 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
31 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
2 formations
- Sarmiento Formation12
- Las Flores Formation · Río Chico Group5
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The named rock units Isotemnus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Isotemnus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Isotemnus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
214 taxa- Henricosbornia lophodonta9 sites
- Archaeopithecus rogeri8 sites
- Pleurostylodon similis7 sites
- Maxschlosseria praeterita6 sites
- Notopithecus adapinus6 sites
- Trigonostylops wortmani6 sites
- Antepithecus brachystephanus5 sites
- Notostylops5 sites
- Notostylops murinus5 sites
- Othnielmarshia lacunifera5 sites
- Polydolops thomasi5 sites
- Thomashuxleya externa5 sites
- Victorlemoineia5 sites
- Anisolambda fissidens4 sites
- Asmithwoodwardia subtrigona4 sites
- Didolodus multicuspis4 sites
- Notostylops pendens4 sites
- Transpithecus obtentus4 sites
- Trigonostylopidae4 sites
- Trigonostylops4 sites
- Albertogaudrya3 sites
- Albertogaudrya unica3 sites
- Amphidolops serrula3 sites
- Didolodus minor3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Isotemnus, 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
13 references- The beginning of the age of mammals in South America. Part II11
- Biostratigraphy of the Casamayoran, Early Eocene of Patagonia4
- Mammiféres crétacés de l’Argentine (Deuxième contribution à la connaissance de la fauna mammalogique de couches à Pyrotherium) [Cretaceous mammals of Argentina (second contribution to the knowledge of the mammalian fauna of the Pyrotherium Beds)]4
- New insights into the Kibenikhoria and Ernestokokenia faunas and the implications for the early Eocene of Patagonia, Argentina2
- Nuevas especies de mamíferos, cretáceos y terciarios de la República Argentina [New species of mammals, Cretaceous and Tertiarty, from the Argentine Republic]2
- Revised timing of the South American early Paleogene land mammal ages1
- New Early Eocene mammalian fauna from western Patagonia, Argentina1
- Vertebrate paleontology, geology, and geochronology of the Tapera de López and Scarritt Pocket, Chubut Province, Argentina1
- The Ameghinos' localities for early Cenozoic mammals in Patagonia1
- Descriptions of the oldest known South American mammals, from the Rio Chico Formation1
- Occurrence and relationships of the Rio Chico fauna of Patagonia1
- Noticias preliminares sobre nuevos mamíferos fósiles del Cretáceo superior y Terciario inferior de la Patagonia1
Each of the 31 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. 1 further reference is 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 Isotemnus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Lmalena
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Isotemnus 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, “Isotemnus”
- 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 itIsotemnidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ameghino 1897