Marmota marmota
The alpine marmot is a large ground-dwelling squirrel, from the genus of marmots. It is found in high numbers in mountainous areas of central and southern Europe, at heights between 800 and 3,200 m (2,600–10,500 ft) in the Alps, Carpathians, Tatras and Northern Apennines. In 1948 they were reintroduced with success in the Pyrenees, where the alpine marmot had disappeared at end of the Pleistocene epoch.
Photography captured by Giles Laurent · 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
- Alpine marmotPBDB
- Sits inside
- MarmotaPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- semifossorialPBDB, for Marmota
- 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 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Marmota marmota 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
8 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.
Marmota marmota and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Marmota marmota and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
87 taxa- Cricetus cricetus5 sites
- Dinaromys5 sites
- Sus scrofa5 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus4 sites
- Cervus4 sites
- Glis glis4 sites
- Microtus4 sites
- Myodes4 sites
- Arvicola3 sites
- Capra ibex3 sites
- Capreolus capreolus3 sites
- Lepus3 sites
- Microtus agrestis3 sites
- Microtus arvalis3 sites
- Pliomys3 sites
- Ursus spelaeus3 sites
- Vulpes3 sites
- Vulpes vulpes3 sites
- Allocricetus2 sites
- Bos primigenius2 sites
- Bovidae2 sites
- Canis lupus2 sites
- Dama dama2 sites
- Equus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Marmota marmota, 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- I giacimenti Quaternari di vertebrati fossili nell'Italia Nord-Orientale5
- La grotte de l'Observatoire à Monaco2
- Biochronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Betfia (Bihor, Romania)1
Each of the 8 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Marmota marmota
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Photography captured by Giles Laurent
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- 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 itMarmota through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)