Litolestes ignotus

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- LitolestesPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Erinaceidae
- Life habit
- semifossorialPBDB, for Erinaceidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 4.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 60.9 Mya and 56 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
12 occurrences of Litolestes ignotus on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
12 occurrences- Paleocene100%
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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Litolestes ignotus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Litolestes ignotus and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Litolestes ignotus and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
189 taxa- Adunator minutus6 sites
- Ignacius frugivorus6 sites
- Neoplagiaulax hazeni6 sites
- Carpolestes dubius5 sites
- Leptacodon packi5 sites
- Microcosmodon conus5 sites
- Dillerlemur pagei4 sites
- Ectypodus powelli4 sites
- Mesodma pygmaea4 sites
- Neoplagiaulax hunteri4 sites
- Peradectes elegans4 sites
- Plesiadapis churchilli4 sites
- Plesiadapis fodinatus4 sites
- Princetonia yalensis4 sites
- Prochetodon cavus4 sites
- Viverravus schaffi4 sites
- Adunator meizon3 sites
- Anura3 sites
- Carpodaptes stonleyi3 sites
- Didymictis dellensis3 sites
- Ectocion mediotuber3 sites
- Ectypodus laytoni3 sites
- Labidolemur soricoides3 sites
- Mimetodon silberlingi3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Litolestes ignotus, 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
8 references- The Tiffanian Land-Mammal Age (middle and late Paleocene) in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming3
- The succession of Paleocene mammals in western Canada2
- Late Cretaceous and Paleocene mammal localities of southern Alberta2
- On the classification of early Tertiary Erinaceomorpha (Insectivora, Mammalia)1
- Schaff, 19851
- First North American record of the Paleocene primate Saxonella1
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary1
- Palaeontology of the Swan Hills area, north-central Alberta1
Each of the 12 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 Litolestes ignotus
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Litolestes ignotus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLitolestes through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Jepsen 1930