Liomys irroratus
The Mexican spiny pocket mouse is a species of rodent in the family Heteromyidae. It is native to Mexico and Texas in the United States where it is found in dry, scrubby habitats. The IUCN has assessed it as being of "least concern". It was formerly placed in the genus Liomys, which is now recognized to be paraphyletic and has been subsumed into Heteromys.

Juan Cruzado Cortés · 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- Also called
- Mexican spiny pocket mousePBDB
- Sits inside
- LiomysPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, browserPBDB, for Heteromyidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Heteromyidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Liomys irroratus 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Liomys irroratus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Liomys irroratus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
76 taxa- Bassariscus astutus2 sites
- Sigmodon hispidus2 sites
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Antilocapra americana1 site
- Artibeus jamaicensis1 site
- Balantiopteryx io1 site
- Canis latrans1 site
- Chaetodipus hispidus1 site
- Cnemidophorus1 site
- Colubrinae1 site
- Conepatus leuconotus1 site
- Cratogeomys castanops1 site
- Cryptotis parva1 site
- Cuon alpinus1 site
- Didelphis marsupialis1 site
- Equus1 site
- Equus conversidens1 site
- Erethizon dorsatum1 site
- Euceratherium1 site
- Eumops perotis1 site
- Hesperomys taylori1 site
- Heterogeomys1 site
- Lepidophyma1 site
- Leptodactylus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Liomys irroratus, 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
3 references- Late Pleistocene mammals from a cave in Tamaulipas, Mexico1
- Vertebrate fauna and hunting patterns1
- Pleistocene Lagomorpha and Rodentia from the San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico1
Each of the 3 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 Liomys irroratus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Juan Cruzado Cortés
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- Liomys irroratus alleni · UMMZ:mammals:120788
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 itLiomys through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1868)