Nyctitherium

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
- NyctitheriidaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Nyctitheriidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Nyctitheriidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Nyctitheriidae
Time the record covers
At least 17 million years on record.
The record covers at least 57.5 Mya to 39.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 60.9 Mya to 37 Mya.
100 occurrences of Nyctitherium 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
100 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
19 formations
- Bridger Formation37
- Friars Formation · La Jolla Group13
- Wasatch Formation7
- Wind River Formation6
- Green River Formation6
- Wagon Bed ("Tepee Trail") Formation6
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The named rock units Nyctitherium 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.
Nyctitherium and its relatives
EoceneWhere Nyctitherium and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
813 taxa- Herpetotherium knighti28 sites
- Omomys carteri20 sites
- Microparamys minutus18 sites
- Herpetotherium innominatum15 sites
- Herpetotherium marsupium15 sites
- Scenopagus edenensis14 sites
- Sciuravus nitidus13 sites
- Hyopsodus minusculus12 sites
- Hyrachyus12 sites
- Microsyops elegans12 sites
- Peradectes chesteri12 sites
- Uintasorex parvulus12 sites
- Apatemys bellus11 sites
- Centetodon bembicophagus11 sites
- Centetodon aztecus10 sites
- Peradectes10 sites
- Sciuravidae10 sites
- Uintaparamys parvus10 sites
- Viverravus gracilis10 sites
- Washakius insignis10 sites
- Crypholestes vaughni9 sites
- Hyopsodus paulus9 sites
- Patriolestes novaceki9 sites
- Peradectes californicus9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 77 sites for Nyctitherium, 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
37 references- Mammalian Fauna From the Lower Bridger Formation (Bridger A, Early Middle Eocene) of the Southern Green River Basin, Wyoming13
- Eocene mammal faunas of San Diego County11
- Mammals from the earliest Uintan (middle Eocene) Turtle Bluff Member, Bridger Formation, southwestern Wyoming, USA, Part 2: Apatotheria, Lipotyphla, Carnivoramorpha, Condylartha, Dinocerata, Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla10
- Early Tertiary Adapisoricidae and Erinaceidae (Mammalia, Insectivora) of North America8
- Fossil Mammalia from the early Wasatchian Four Mile fauna, Eocene of northwest Colorado5
- Revision of the Wind River faunas, early Eocene of central Wyoming. Part 5. Geology and biostratigraphy of the upper part of the Wind River Formation, northeastern Wind River Basin4
- Geology, Paleontology, and Correlation of Eocene Volcaniclastic Rocks, Southeast Absaroka Range, Hot Springs County, Wyoming4
- Paleontology and geology of the Badwater Creek area, central Wyoming. Part 13. The late Eocene Insectivora and Dermoptera4
- Middle Eocene marsupials (Mammalia) from northeastern Utah and the mammalian fauna from Powder Wash3
- Summary of known occurrences of terrestrial vertebrates from Eocene strata of southern California3
- Age and stratigraphic relationships of the Fowkes Formation, Eocene, of southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah3
- Godiva Rim Member; a new stratigraphic unit of the Green River Formation in Southwest Wyoming and Northwest Colorado2
Each of the 100 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. 25 further references are not listed. 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 Nyctitherium
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nyctitherium 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 itNyctitheriidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1872