Prionailurus bengalensis

The leopard cat is a small wild cat with dark spots on the tawny-coloured body and limbs. It has two dark stripes running from the eyes to the ears and smaller white streaks running from the eyes to the nose, and two to four rows of elongated spots along its back. Its tail is about half the size of its head-to-body length.

Prionailurus bengalensis

Abujoy · 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
leopard catPBDB
Sits inside
PrionailurusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Felidae
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Felidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 1.7 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 1.8 Mya and 129 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 2 of 2 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences1.8–1.8 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.5–1.5 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.1–1.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.1–997 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences997 ka–920 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences920 ka–843 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences843 ka–767 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences767 ka–690 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences690 ka–613 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences613 ka–537 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences537 ka–460 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences460 ka–383 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences383 ka–307 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences307 ka–230 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences230 ka–153 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences153 ka–77 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.3 Mya0 Mya

2 occurrences of Prionailurus bengalensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

2 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.

Prionailurus bengalensis and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Prionailurus bengalensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

49 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Prionailurus bengalensis, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 Prionailurus bengalensis

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

No 3D scan of Prionailurus bengalensis 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 itPrionailurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Kerr 1792)