Pongo

Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be one species. In 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan and the Sumatran orangutan ; a third species, the Tapanuli orangutan, was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only surviving members of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago.

Pongo

Eleifert · 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
Also called
orangutanPBDB
Sits inside
PonginiPBDB
Diet
frugivore, folivorePBDB
Life habit
arborealPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At least 645 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Pliocene — about 0 of 24 occurrencesPleistocene — about 24 of 24 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 24 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.5–2.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.4–2.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.2–2.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.1–2.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.0–1.8 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–1.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.0–924 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences924 ka–821 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences821 ka–719 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence719 ka–616 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences616 ka–513 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences513 ka–411 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences411 ka–308 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences308 ka–205 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences205 ka–103 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences103 ka–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences774 ka129 ka3.08 Mya0 Mya

24 occurrences of Pongo 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

24 occurrences

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.

Pongo and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Pongo and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

195 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Pongo, 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

12 references

Each of the 24 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 content3

Picture of Pongo

Credit
Eleifert
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Pongo pygmaeus · AMNH:Mammals:M-28253

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

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

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 itPongini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lacépède 1799