Parahippus leonensis
Parahippus leonensis is an extinct proto-horse of the family Equidae that was endemic to North America during the Miocene from 23.03 to 16.3 million years ago, living for approximately 6.73 million years.

Geekgecko · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- ParahippusPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Equidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Equidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 2.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 18.5 Mya to 16.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 29.5 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
24 occurrences of Parahippus leonensis 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
24 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
7 formations
- Oakville Formation7
- John Day Formation5
- Torreya Formation2
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Alachua Formation1
- Browns Park Formation1
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The named rock units Parahippus leonensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Parahippus leonensis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Parahippus leonensis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
314 taxa- Archaeohippus blackbergi6 sites
- Prosynthetoceras texanus5 sites
- Menoceras barbouri4 sites
- Amphicyon longiramus3 sites
- Anchitherium navasotae3 sites
- Batrachosauroides dissimulans3 sites
- Bouromeryx submilleri3 sites
- Marshochoerus socialis3 sites
- Alligator olseni2 sites
- Anchitheriomys2 sites
- Anchitherium clarencei2 sites
- Camelidae2 sites
- Crocodylia2 sites
- Floridaceras whitei2 sites
- Floridatragulus2 sites
- Harrymys magnus2 sites
- Lepisosteus2 sites
- Merycoidodontidae2 sites
- Metatomarctus canavus2 sites
- Nothokemas floridanus2 sites
- Osbornodon iamonensis2 sites
- Proheteromys floridanus2 sites
- Pseudemys2 sites
- Rhinocerotidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Parahippus leonensis, 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
12 references- The Fossil Horses of the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain: A Revision7
- Systematics, stratigraphy, and chronology for mammalian fossils (Late Arikareean to Hemingfordian) from the uppermost John Day Formation, Warm Springs, Oregon5
- Early Miocene entelodonts, Texas Coastal Plain2
- Description of some fossil vertebrates from the Upper Miocene of Texas2
- The early Hemingfordian (early Miocene) Pollack Farm local fauna; first Tertiary land mammals described from Delaware1
- Paleontology, taphonomy, and stratigraphy of the Browns Park Formation (Oligocene and Miocene) near Maybell, Moffat County, Colorado1
- The Miocene salamander Batrachosauroides dissimulans (Amphibia, Urodela) from East Texas1
- The stratigraphic importance of a Lower Miocene vertebrate fauna from north Florida1
- A Preliminary Report on the Miocene Vertebrate Faunas of Southeast Texas1
- The Lower Miocene mammal fauna of Florida1
- Final report covering the period from March 4, 1939 ro September 30, 1941 for the state-wide paleontologic-mineralogic survey in Texas1
- Fossil vertebrates from Florida: A new Miocene fauna; new Pliocene species; the Pleistocene fauna1
Each of the 24 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 content2
Picture of Parahippus leonensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Geekgecko
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- UIPaleoRepository
- 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 itParahippus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Sellards 1916)