Pelomys
Pelomys is a genus of rodent in the family Muridae endemic to Africa. It contains the following species:Bell groove-toothed swamp rat Creek groove-toothed swamp rat Hopkins's groove-toothed swamp rat Issel's groove-toothed swamp rat Least groove-toothed swamp rat
via iDigBio · CC BY · 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- Also called
- groove-toothed swamp ratPBDB
- Sits inside
- MuridaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, insectivorePBDB, for Muridae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Muridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.09 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 6.965 Mya to 0 Mya.
9 occurrences of Pelomys on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
9 occurrences- Miocene10%
- Pliocene1%
- Pleistocene78%
- Holocene11%
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
2 formations
- Shungura Formation · Omo Group1
- Olduvai Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Pelomys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pelomys and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pelomys and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
190 taxa- Epimys (Aethomys)8 sites
- Tatera8 sites
- Crocidura7 sites
- Epimys (Mastomys)6 sites
- Otomys6 sites
- Saccostomus6 sites
- Lemniscomys5 sites
- Steatomys pratensis5 sites
- Thallomys5 sites
- Dasymys4 sites
- Miniopterus schreibersi4 sites
- Chiroptera3 sites
- Clarias3 sites
- Cryptomys hottentotus3 sites
- Elephantulus brachyrhynchus3 sites
- Epimys (Aethomys) kaiseri3 sites
- Mus3 sites
- Mus musculoides3 sites
- Suncus varilla3 sites
- Zelotomys3 sites
- Aepyceros melampus2 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus2 sites
- Capra hircus2 sites
- Chlorocebus aethiops2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Pelomys, 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
6 references- Early and Middle Pleistocene environments and hominid biogeography; micromammalian evidence from Kabwe, Twin Rivers and Mumbwa Caves in central Zambia4
- The Omo Group: Archives of the International Omo Research Expedition1
- The Mammalian Fauna from the Middle and Later Stone Age (Later Pleistocene) Levels of Border Cave, Natal Province, South Africa1
- The Prehistory of Eastern Zambia1
- Fossil snakes from Olduvai,Tanzania1
- Upper Pliocene Rodentia, Lagomorpha and Insectivora (Mammalia) from the isle of Rhodes (Greece). I, II and III.1
Each of the 9 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 Pelomys
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC BY
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pelomys 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Pelomys”
- 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 itMuridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Peters 1852