Plesiadapis dubius

via iDigBio · 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- Sits inside
- PlesiadapisPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Plesiadapoidea
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Plesiadapoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Plesiadapoidea
Time the record covers
At least 1.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 57.5 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 60.9 Mya to 51.1 Mya.
51 occurrences of Plesiadapis dubius 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
51 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
5 formations
- Fort Union Formation27
- DeBeque Formation5
- Wasatch Formation3
- Lower Variegated Sequence Formation2
- Willwood Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Plesiadapis dubius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Plesiadapis dubius and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Plesiadapis dubius and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
178 taxa- Ectocion osbornianus33 sites
- Phenacodus vortmani20 sites
- Phenacodus intermedius14 sites
- Carpolestes nigridens13 sites
- Dillerlemur pagei13 sites
- Apheliscus nitidus10 sites
- Phenacodus grangeri10 sites
- Probathyopsis harrisorum10 sites
- Chriacus8 sites
- Palaeosinopa8 sites
- Plesiadapis cookei8 sites
- Arctocyon nexus7 sites
- Didymictis dellensis7 sites
- Phenacodus7 sites
- Plesiadapis gingerichi7 sites
- Didymictis6 sites
- Ectoganus lobdelli6 sites
- Ectypodus powelli6 sites
- Adunator minutus5 sites
- Didymictis protenus5 sites
- Emydidae5 sites
- Neoliotomus conventus5 sites
- Phenacodontidae5 sites
- Princetonia yalensis5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 50 sites for Plesiadapis dubius, 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
11 references- The Tiffanian Land-Mammal Age (middle and late Paleocene) in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming20
- The Clarkforkian Land-Mammal Age and Mammalian Faunal Composition Across the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary13
- Early Eocene Mammalian Fauna of the Piceance Creek Basin. Northwestern Colorado5
- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary4
- Additions to the latest Paleocene Buckman Hollow local fauna, Chappo Member of the Wasatch Formation, Lincoln County, southwestern Wyoming2
- Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary vertebrate paleontological reconnaissance, Togwotee Pass area, northwestern Wyoming2
- A latest Paleocene mammal fauna from the Great Divide Basin in southern Wyoming and a revised biozonation of the Clarkforkian land mammal age1
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1
- A new clarkforkian primate fauna from the great divide basin, SW Wyoming1
- Krause, 19861
- New Plesiadapiform Primates from the Eocene of Wyoming and Montana1
Each of the 51 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 Plesiadapis dubius
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Plesiadapis dubius 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPlesiadapis through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Matthew 1915)