Raphicerus melanotis
The Cape or southern grysbok is a small antelope that is endemic to the Western Cape region of South Africa between Albany and the Cederberg mountains.

Uncredited · 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
- Cape grysbokPBDB
- Sits inside
- RaphicerusPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Bovidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Bovidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Raphicerus melanotis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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 occurrences- Pleistocene77%
- Holocene23%
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.
Raphicerus melanotis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Raphicerus melanotis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
111 taxa- Hippopotamus amphibius11 sites
- Taurotragus oryx11 sites
- Arctocephalus pusillus10 sites
- Lupulella mesomelas10 sites
- Procavia capensis10 sites
- Syncerus caffer10 sites
- Galerella pulverulenta9 sites
- Hystrix africaeaustralis9 sites
- Mellivora capensis9 sites
- Felis lybica8 sites
- Hippotragus leucophaeus8 sites
- Homo sapiens8 sites
- Loxodonta africana8 sites
- Papio ursinus8 sites
- Pelea capreolus8 sites
- Bathyergus suillus7 sites
- Caracal caracal7 sites
- Delphinidae7 sites
- Equus capensis7 sites
- Oreotragus oreotragus7 sites
- Panthera pardus7 sites
- Raphicerus campestris7 sites
- Redunca arundinum7 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Raphicerus melanotis, 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- The Mammalian Fauna of the Klasies River Mouth Sites, Southern Cape Province, South Africa2
- The Middle and Later Stone Age faunal remains from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa1
- Blombos Cave, Southern Cape, South Africa: Preliminary Report on the 1992–1999 Excavations of the Middle Stone Age Levels1
- Middle and later Stone Age large mammal and tortoise remains from Die Kelders Cave 1, Western Cape Province, South Africa1
- Late Pleisticene Humans Remains from the Sea Harvest Site, Saldanha Bay, South Africa1
- Large mammal and tortoise bones from Eland's Bay Cave and nearby sites, Western Cape Province, South Africa1
- The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa1
- Later Stone Age Subsistence at Byeneskranskop, South Africa1
- Excavations in the Buffelskoof Rock Shelter near Calitzdorp, Southern Cape1
- A Preliminary Report on the Middle Stone Age Open-Air Site of Duinefontein 2 (Melkbosstrand, South-Western Cape Province, South Africa)1
- Paleoanthropological Implications of the Non-Archaeological Bone Assemblages from Swartklip 1, South-Western Cape Province, South Africa1
- The Fauna of Scott's Cave, Gamtoos Valley, South-Eastern Cape Province1
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 Raphicerus melanotis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Raphicerus melanotis 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 itRaphicerus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thunberg 1811