Ontocetus emmonsi

Van Beneden · Public Domain · 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
- OntocetusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Odobenidae
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pinnipedia
Time the record covers
At least 4.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 4.7 Mya to 210 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
64 occurrences of Ontocetus emmonsi on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
64 occurrences- Miocene11%
- Pliocene64%
- Pleistocene25%
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
15 formations
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group16
- Peace River Formation · Hawthorn Group6
- Tamiami Formation6
- Lillo Formation3
- Goose Creek Formation3
- Red Crag Formation2
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The named rock units Ontocetus emmonsi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ontocetus emmonsi and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Ontocetus emmonsi and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
916 taxa- Phocidae11 sites
- Mysticeti10 sites
- Balaenopteridae8 sites
- Equus7 sites
- Kogiidae6 sites
- Testudines5 sites
- Acipenser4 sites
- Balaenidae4 sites
- Mammuthus meridionalis4 sites
- Ninoziphius platyrostris4 sites
- Sus scrofa4 sites
- Balaena3 sites
- Balaenula balaenopsis3 sites
- Borophagus hilli3 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis3 sites
- Caretta3 sites
- Cervus3 sites
- Cormohipparion emsliei3 sites
- Crocodylus3 sites
- Delphinapterus3 sites
- Dinohippus mexicanus3 sites
- Galeocerdo cuvier3 sites
- Geochelone3 sites
- Goniodelphis hudsoni3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 59 sites for Ontocetus emmonsi, 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
17 references- Pliocene walruses from the Yorktown Formation of Virginia and North Carolina, and a systematic revision of the North Atlantic Pliocene walruses37
- Miocene and Pliocene marine mammal faunas from the Bone Valley Formation of central Florida4
- The Kor & Bot collection revisited, with a biostratigraphic interpretation of the Early Pleistocene Oosterschelde Fauna (Oosterschelde Estuary, the Netherlands)3
- On the sources of the mammalian fossils of the Red Crag, and the discovery of a new mammal in that deposit, allied to the walrus3
- Cenozoic vertebrate biostratigraphy of South Carolina, U.S.A. and additions to the fauna2
- On fossil trichechids from Zeeland and Belgium2
- The Vertebrata of the Forest Bed Series of Norfolk and Suffolk2
- Sur quelques mammiferes du crag d'Anvers2
- Youngest record of extinct walrus Ontocetus ommonsi (Carnivora: Odobenidae): Plio-Pleistocene Austin Sand Pit, South Carolina, USA1
- Neogene stratigraphy of the Langenboom locality (Noord-Brabant, Netherlands)1
- The late Pliocene locality of Ahl al Oughlam, Morocco; vertebrate fauna and interpretation1
- Un nouveau gisement paleontologique plio-pleistocene en Afrique du Nord: Ahl al Oughlam (ancienne carriere Deprez) a Casablanca (Maroc)1
Each of the 64 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. 5 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 content2

Picture of Ontocetus emmonsi
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Van Beneden
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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 itOntocetus through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leidy 1859)