Moropus elatus

Claire H. from New York City, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikidata/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
- MoropusPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Chalicotherioidea
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Chalicotherioidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.1 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Moropus elatus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
6 occurrencesThese 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
2 formations
- Marsland Formation · Hemingford Group3
- Troublesome Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Moropus elatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Moropus elatus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Moropus elatus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
46 taxa- Equidae4 sites
- Ysengrinia americana4 sites
- Camelidae3 sites
- Cynelos3 sites
- Daphoenodon2 sites
- Daphoenodon superbus2 sites
- Diceratherium2 sites
- Diceratherium niobrarense2 sites
- Dinohyus hollandi2 sites
- Kalobatippus agatensis2 sites
- Menoceras arikarense2 sites
- Accipitridae1 site
- Aletomeryx1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Barbouromeryx trigonocorneus1 site
- Blastomerycinae1 site
- Borophaginae1 site
- Cephalogale1 site
- Cormocyon copei1 site
- Cynarctoides acridens1 site
- Delotrochanter oryktes1 site
- Desmocyon thomsoni1 site
- Diceratherium annectens1 site
- Dinohyus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Moropus elatus, 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- Analysis of the geology, fauna, and taphonomy of Morava Ranch Quarry, Early Miocene of northwest Nebraska2
- Coombs, 19841
- Reevaluation of Early Miocene North American Moropus (Perissodactyla, Chalicotheriidae, Schizotheriinae)1
- Lewis, 19691
- The Miocene Beds of Western Nebraska and Eastern Wyoming and Their Vertebrate Faunae1
Each of the 6 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Moropus elatus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Claire H. from New York City, USA
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Moropus elatus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itMoropus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Marsh 1877)