Plesiadapiformes
Plesiadapiformes is an extinct basal pan-primates group, as sister to the rest of the pan-primates. The pan-primates together with the Dermoptera form the Primatomorpha. Purgatorius may not be a primate as an extinct sister to the rest of the Dermoptera or a separate, more basal stem pan-primate branch. Even with Purgatorius removed, the crown primates may even have emerged in this group.

Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com ) · CC BY-SA 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
- PrimatesPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, omnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 17 million years on record.
The record covers at least 63.4 Mya to 45.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 39.7 Mya.
80 occurrences of Plesiadapiformes on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
80 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
24 formations
- Fort Union Formation28
- Nacimiento Formation12
- Paskapoo Formation5
- Lignites de Soissonais Formation4
- Hanna Formation3
- Tullock Formation2
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The named rock units Plesiadapiformes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Plesiadapiformes and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Plesiadapiformes and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
897 taxa- Promioclaenus acolytus18 sites
- Tricentes subtrigonus16 sites
- Anisonchus sectorius15 sites
- Tetraclaenodon puercensis12 sites
- Chriacus pelvidens10 sites
- Haplaletes disceptatrix10 sites
- Neoplagiaulax10 sites
- Periptychus carinidens10 sites
- Protictis haydenianus10 sites
- Ptilodus10 sites
- Acmeodon secans9 sites
- Arctocyon ferox9 sites
- Bessoecetor septentrionalis9 sites
- Bryanictis microlestes9 sites
- Chriacus baldwini9 sites
- Litomylus dissentaneus9 sites
- Mimetodon silberlingi9 sites
- Mixodectes malaris9 sites
- Neoplagiaulacidae9 sites
- Paromomys depressidens9 sites
- Promioclaenus lemuroides9 sites
- Psittacotherium multifragum9 sites
- Anconodon cochranensis8 sites
- Diacodon puercensis8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 56 sites for Plesiadapiformes, 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
37 references- Evolutionary History of Microsyopoidea (Mammalia, ?Primates) and the Relationship Between Plesiadapiformes and Primates11
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals8
- Paleocene vertebrate paleontology of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico6
- A new family of Plesiadapiformes (Mammalia) from the Old World Lower Paleogene5
- Earliest Palaeocene purgatoriids and the initial radiation of stem primates4
- The origin of the plesiadapid primates and the nature of Purgatorius4
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary4
- A new middle Paleocene (early Tiffanian) mammalian fauna from the Overland Member of the Fort Union Formation, Great Divide Basin, Wyoming, U.S.A.3
- Paleocene mammalian biostratigraphy of the Carbon Basin, southeastern Wyoming, and age constraints on local phases of tectonism3
- Late Torrejonian (middle Paleocene) mammals from south central Alberta, Canada2
- A new plesiadapiform (Mammalia: Plesiadapiformes) from the early Eocene of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming2
- Paleontology and biostratigraphy of lower part of Polecat Bench Formation, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming2
Each of the 80 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. 25 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 content1
Picture of Plesiadapiformes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Plesiadapiformes 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 itPrimates through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Simons and Tattersall 1972)