Protungulatum

Protungulatum is an extinct genus of eutherian mammals within extinct family Protungulatidae, and is possibly one of the earliest known placental mammals in the fossil record, that lived in North America from the Late Cretaceous to early Paleocene.

Protungulatum

Uncredited · CC0 · 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
ArctocyonidaePBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Arctocyonidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 8.8 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 63.4 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 5 of 64 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 59 of 64 occurrencesPaleocene72–72 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 4 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 7 occurrences66–65 Mya — about 7 occurrences65–65 Mya — about 7 occurrences65–65 Mya — about 7 occurrences65–64 Mya — about 7 occurrences64–64 Mya — about 7 occurrences64–64 Mya — about 7 occurrences64–63 Mya — about 3 occurrences72.7 Mya62.9 Mya

64 occurrences of Protungulatum 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

64 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.

Found in

10 formations

Hell Creek — 47.80°N, 106.10°WHell Creek — 47.80°N, 106.21°WHell Creek — 45.87°N, 104.88°WFerris — 41.80°N, 107.00°WFerris — 41.94°N, 106.88°WFort Union — 47.60°N, 107.00°WFort Union — 41.66°N, 107.80°WFort Union — 47.60°N, 106.20°WFort Union — 47.80°N, 106.10°WLance — 41.57°N, 108.67°WFrenchman — 49.50°N, 109.10°WRavenscrag — 49.50°N, 109.20°WLudlow — 46.40°N, 103.30°WTullock — 47.80°N, 106.10°WBear — 46.20°N, 109.90°WDenver — 39.50°N, 104.70°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Protungulatum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Protungulatum and its relatives

Paleocene

Where Protungulatum and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.

Found in the same rock

218 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 50 sites for Protungulatum, 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

19 references

Each of the 64 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. 7 further references are not listed. 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 Protungulatum

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Protungulatum 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 itArctocyonidae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sloan and Van Valen 1965