Kerodon rupestris
The rock cavy or mocó is a species of cavy that is endemic to eastern Brazil. It has also been introduced to the Atlantic island of Fernando de Noronha.

The original uploader was Brian.gratwicke at English Wikipedia . · CC BY 2.5 · 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
- KerodonPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Caviidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Caviidae
- 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 Kerodon rupestris on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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.
Kerodon rupestris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Kerodon rupestris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
79 taxa- Thrichomys7 sites
- Mazama4 sites
- Cuniculus paca3 sites
- Dasypodinae3 sites
- Dasyprocta3 sites
- Equus caballus3 sites
- Galea3 sites
- Hippidion3 sites
- Macrauchenia patagonica3 sites
- Palaeolama major3 sites
- Pecari tajacu3 sites
- Tayassu pecari3 sites
- Akodon cursor2 sites
- Arctotherium (Pararctotherium) brasiliense2 sites
- Calomys callosus2 sites
- Catonyx cuvieri2 sites
- Conepatus2 sites
- Dasypus2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Galea spixii2 sites
- Glyptodon2 sites
- Glyptodon euphractus2 sites
- Marmosa2 sites
- Monodelphis domestica2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Kerodon rupestris, 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
5 references- Late Quaternary caviomorph rodents (Rodentia: Hystricognathi) from the Serra da Capivara, northeastern Brazil, with description of a new taxon3
- Imigrantes em um continente perdido: O registro fossilífero de roedores Caviomorpha (Mammalia: Rodentia: Ctenohystrica) do Cenozoico do Brasil1
- Assembleia holocênica de vertebrados de pequeno porte do Sítio Alcobaça, Estado de Pernambuco, Brasil1
- La Faune Pleistocene du Piaui (Nordeste du Bresil): Implications Paleoecologiques et Biochronologiques1
- La faune de vertébrés du Pléistocéne supérieur de l’aire archéologique de São Raimundo Nonato (Piauí, Brésil)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 content2
Picture of Kerodon rupestris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- The original uploader was Brian.gratwicke at English Wikipedia .
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Kerodon rupestris · ummz:mammals:157311
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rock cavy”
- 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 itKerodon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wied 1820