Mesohippus westoni
via iDigBio · 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
- MesohippusPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Equidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Equidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 3.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
10 occurrences of Mesohippus westoni 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
10 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Mesohippus westoni has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mesohippus westoni and its relatives
EoceneWhere Mesohippus westoni and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
207 taxa- Brontotheriidae9 sites
- Palaeolagus temnodon6 sites
- Herpetotherium valens5 sites
- Hesperocyon gregarius5 sites
- Leptomeryx speciosus5 sites
- Megalagus brachyodon5 sites
- Prosciurus vetustus5 sites
- Stibarus montanus5 sites
- <Novacek leptictid>4 sites
- Aulolithomys bounites4 sites
- Copedelphys titanelix4 sites
- Douglassciurus jeffersoni4 sites
- Herpetotherium fugax4 sites
- Ischyromys veterior4 sites
- Leptomeryx mammifer4 sites
- Merycoidodontidae4 sites
- Micropternodus borealis4 sites
- Oligoryctes cameronensis4 sites
- Poebrotherium4 sites
- Trigenicus profectus4 sites
- Ankylodon3 sites
- Archaeotherium coarctatum3 sites
- Bathygenys alpha3 sites
- Brachyrhynchocyon dodgei3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Mesohippus westoni, 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
7 references- Eocene-Oligocene faunas of the Cypress Hills Formation, Saskatchewan3
- Tertiary paleontology of southwest Montana and adjacent Idaho2
- Pearson and Hoganson, 19951
- Biostratigraphy of the Cypress Hills Formation (Eocene to Miocene), Saskatchewan: equid types (Mammalia: Perissodactyla) and associated faunal assemblages1
- Tertiary geology of the Beaver Rim area, Fremont and Natrona Counties, Wyoming1
- Uranium in the Mayoworth area, Johnson County, Wyoming--a preliminary report1
- On vertebrata from the Tertiary and Cretaceous rocks of the North West Territory: The species from the Oligocene or Lower Miocene beds of the Cypress Hills1
Each of the 10 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 Mesohippus westoni
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Mesohippus westoni 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 itMesohippus through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cope 1889)