Protaceratherium
Protaceratherium is an extinct genus of rhinocerotid from the Oligocene and Miocene of Eurasia.

Ghedoghedo · 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
- RhinocerotinaePBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Rhinocerotidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Rhinocerotidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 15.98 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 7.246 Mya.
18 occurrences of Protaceratherium on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
18 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
3 formations
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The named rock units Protaceratherium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Protaceratherium and its relatives
MioceneWhere Protaceratherium and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
243 taxa- Brachyodus6 sites
- Andegameryx5 sites
- Aureliachoerus aurelianensis5 sites
- Cynelos helbingi5 sites
- Lagopsis5 sites
- Phoberocyon5 sites
- Anchitherium aurelianense4 sites
- Cainotherium lintillae4 sites
- Hemicyon4 sites
- Palaeomeryx4 sites
- Procervulus dichotomus4 sites
- Ronzotherium4 sites
- Steneofiber depereti4 sites
- Amphicyon3 sites
- Amphicyon lathanicus3 sites
- Amphitragulus3 sites
- Bunolistriodon3 sites
- Diaceratherium massiliae3 sites
- Eucricetodon infralactorensis3 sites
- Lagomeryx3 sites
- Ligeromeryx praestans3 sites
- Martes3 sites
- Paratapirus intermedius3 sites
- Plesiaceratherium platyodon3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Protaceratherium, 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- Diaceratherium massiliae nov. sp. des argiles oligocènes de Saint-André et Saint-Henri à Marseille et de Les Milles près d’Aix-en-Provence (SE de la France), premier grand Rhinocerotidae brachypode européen3
- Le site paléontologique du Grand Morier (Pont-Boutard, Indre-et-Loire, France): contexte géologique et détail biostratigraphique des formations cénozoïques à partir des assemblages de vertébrés fossiles2
- Les fossiles de mammifères miocènes de la colletion de J.-P. Hartmann conservés dans le Musée du Savignéen2
- Will Downs and the Zinda Pir Dome2
- La succession des faunes de mammiferes miocenes de Pontigne (Maine-et-Loire, France)2
- A new late Early Oligocene vertebrate fauna from Moissac, South-West France1
- Tapiridae (Perissodactyla, Mammalia) of the Swiss Molasse Basin during the Oligocene–Miocene transition1
- First complete skulls of Elomeryx crispus (Gervais, 1849) and of Protaceratherium albigense (Roman, 1912) from a new Oligocene locality near Moissac (SW France)1
- A giant rhinocerotoid (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) from the Late Oligocene of north-central Anatolia (Turkey)1
- Les vertébrés du Miocène moyen de Contres (Loir-et-Cher, France)1
- Oligocene stratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy, and mammalian biochronology north of the Aral Sea, Western Kazakstan1
- Nouvelles decouvertes de vertebres miocenes dans le synclina de Dera Bugti (Balouchistan, Pakistan)1
Each of the 18 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 Protaceratherium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Protaceratherium 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 itRhinocerotinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Abel 1910