Parailurus anglicus
Parailurus is a genus of extinct carnivoran mammal in the family Ailuridae. It was about 50% larger than Ailurus and lived in the Early to Late Pliocene, and its fossils have been found in Europe, Asia and North America.

Patricia Holroyd · CC BY 3.0 · 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
- ParailurusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Carnivora
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Carnivora
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 3.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 1.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Parailurus anglicus 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
2 occurrences- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Parailurus anglicus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Parailurus anglicus and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Parailurus anglicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
61 taxa- Canis2 sites
- Anancus arvernensis1 site
- Balaenidae1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Balaenotus insignis1 site
- Balaenula balaenopsis1 site
- Belemnoziphius compressus1 site
- Bovidae1 site
- Castor fiber1 site
- Cervidae1 site
- Cervus1 site
- Cervus dicranocerus1 site
- Choneziphius planirostris1 site
- Dicerorhinus1 site
- Dihoplus schleiermacheri1 site
- Dolichopithecus ruscinensis1 site
- Felidae1 site
- Felis1 site
- Globicephala uncidens1 site
- Herpetocetus scaldiensis1 site
- Heterocetus brevifrons1 site
- Hipparion1 site
- Hippopotamodon antiquus1 site
- Hoplocetinae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Parailurus anglicus, 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
2 references- Pliocene and Pleistocene mammalian biostratigraphy in southeastern Transylvania (Romania)1
- On some new mammals from the Red and Norwich Crags1
Each of the 2 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 Parailurus anglicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Patricia Holroyd
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Parailurus anglicus 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Parailurus”
- 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 itParailurus through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Dawkins 1888)