Protapirus simplex

via iDigBio · CC0 · 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
- ProtapirusPBDB
- Diet
- browserPBDB, for Tapiridae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Tapiridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 2.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 31.8 Mya to 29.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 18.5 Mya.
4 occurrences of Protapirus simplex on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
4 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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Protapirus simplex has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Protapirus simplex and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Protapirus simplex and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
52 taxa- Aepinacodon americanus1 site
- Agnotocastor praetereadens1 site
- Apeomys catahoulaensis1 site
- Archaeotherium mortoni1 site
- Bathornis geographicus1 site
- Colodon occidentalis1 site
- Corumictis1 site
- Daeodon1 site
- Daphoenus1 site
- Diceratherium1 site
- Downsimus rainsi1 site
- Elomeryx1 site
- Eutypomys1 site
- Heptacodon occidentale1 site
- Herpetotherium1 site
- Hesperopetes1 site
- Hoplophoneus occidentalis1 site
- Hoplophoneus primaevus1 site
- Hyaenodon crucians1 site
- Hyaenodon horridus1 site
- Hypertragulus calcaratus1 site
- Hypertragulus minutus1 site
- Hyracodon1 site
- Ischyromys1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Protapirus simplex, 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
4 references- Mammals of the early Arikareean (“middle” Oligocene) Jones Branch Local Fauna, southeastern Mississippi, USA, with notes on two older taxa from the state and the timing of Midcontinent–Gulf Coastal Plain biotic disparity1
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1
- New genus of tapir (Mammalia: Tapiridae) from the Arikareean (earliest Miocene) of the Texas Coastal Plain1
- Ancestors of the tapir from the lower Miocene of Dakota1
Each of the 4 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 content2

Picture of Protapirus simplex
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- SDSM Museum of Geology
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Protapirus simplex · SDSM:Vertebrate Paleontology:2829
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itProtapirus through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wortman and Earle 1893