Peromyscus eremicus
The cactus mouse or cactus deermouse is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is a species of the genus Peromyscus, a closely related group of New World mice often called "deermice". They are native to desert areas of western North America.

Uncredited · 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
- PeromyscusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Rodentia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Peromyscus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Mass
- 2.5 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Peromyscus eremicus 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene75%
- Holocene25%
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.
Peromyscus eremicus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Peromyscus eremicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
136 taxa- Peromyscus maniculatus4 sites
- Chaetodipus hispidus3 sites
- Dipodomys spectabilis3 sites
- Lepus californicus3 sites
- Megascapheus bottae3 sites
- Myotis velifer3 sites
- Neotoma albigula3 sites
- Otospermophilus variegatus3 sites
- Perognathus flavus3 sites
- Peromyscus boylii3 sites
- Peromyscus leucopus3 sites
- Reithrodontomys megalotis3 sites
- Sylvilagus audubonii3 sites
- Antrozous pallidus2 sites
- Bassariscus astutus2 sites
- Cratogeomys castanops2 sites
- Crotaphytus collaris2 sites
- Dipodomys merriami2 sites
- Dipodomys ordii2 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus2 sites
- Lynx rufus2 sites
- Marmota flaviventris2 sites
- Microtus mexicanus2 sites
- Myotis lucifugus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Peromyscus eremicus, 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
3 references- Late Pleistocene and early Recent mammals from Fowlkes Cave, southern Culberson County, Texas2
- Reconstruction of mid Wisconsinan environments in southern New Mexico1
- Further study of the Friesenhahn Cave Peromyscus1
Each of the 4 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 Peromyscus eremicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Peromyscus eremicus 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
- 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 itPeromyscus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Baird 1858)