Prodinoceras
Prodinoceras, from Ancient Greek πρό (pró), meaning "before", δεινός (deinós), meaning "terrible", and κέρας (kéras), meaning "horn", is the earliest known dinocerate genus, which lived in the late Paleocene of Mongolia.

MikSed · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- ProdinoceratidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Dinocerata
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Dinocerata
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 59.24 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Prodinoceras 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
13 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
6 formations
- Nomogen Formation4
- Dabu Formation1
- Naran Bulak Formation1
- Khaychin Formation1
- Khashat Formation1
- Wutu Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Prodinoceras has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Prodinoceras and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Prodinoceras and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
138 taxa- Hyracolestes ermineus3 sites
- Palaeostylops iturus3 sites
- Pseudictops lophiodon3 sites
- Archaeolambda2 sites
- Dissacus serratus2 sites
- Eomylus bayanulanensis2 sites
- Eomylus zhigdenensis2 sites
- Lambdopsalis bulla2 sites
- Pachyaena2 sites
- Palaeostylops2 sites
- Palaeostylops macrodon2 sites
- Prionessus2 sites
- Prionessus lucifer2 sites
- Pseudictops2 sites
- Rodentia2 sites
- Sarcodon pygmaeus2 sites
- Tribosphenomys minutus2 sites
- Acritoparamys1 site
- Acritoparamys wutui1 site
- Alagomys oriensis1 site
- Ampholophus luensis1 site
- Arctostylops1 site
- Arfia palustris1 site
- Asiohyopsodus confuciusi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Prodinoceras, 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
8 references- The Paleogene mammals of China4
- Glires (Mammalia) from the Late Paleocene Bayan Ulan Locality of Inner Mongolia2
- Palaeocene and Eocene Mixodontia (Mammalia, Glires) of Mongolia and China2
- The Gashatan (late Paleocene) mammal fauna from Subeng, Inner Mongolia1
- Fossil Mammals from the Early Eocene Wutu Formation of Shandong Province1
- Gomphos elkema (Glires, Mammalia) from the Erlian Basin: evidence for the early Tertiary Bumbanian Land Mammal Age in Nei-Mongol, China1
- Two new early Eocene mammals from Sinkiang Uighur with remarks on the age of Gashato Fromation1
- Additions to the fauna of the Gashato Formation of Mongolia1
Each of the 13 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 Prodinoceras
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- MikSed
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itProdinoceratidae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Matthew et al. 1929