Spilogale gracilis
The western spotted skunk is a spotted skunk of western North America.

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
- western spotted skunkPBDB
- Sits inside
- SpilogalePBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Carnivora
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Spilogale
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Spilogale gracilis on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene9%
- Holocene91%
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.
Spilogale gracilis and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Spilogale gracilis and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
98 taxa- Neotoma9 sites
- Ovis canadensis9 sites
- Sylvilagus9 sites
- Thomomys7 sites
- Lepus6 sites
- Megascapheus bottae5 sites
- Otospermophilus variegatus5 sites
- Sylvilagus audubonii4 sites
- Chiroptera3 sites
- Dipodomys3 sites
- Heteromyidae3 sites
- Muridae3 sites
- Odocoileus3 sites
- Ammospermophilus2 sites
- Antrozous pallidus2 sites
- Bassariscus astutus2 sites
- Peromyscus2 sites
- Acipenser medirostris1 site
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Anaxyrus boreas1 site
- Aplodontia rufa1 site
- Arctodus simus1 site
- Bassariscus1 site
- Bison1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Spilogale gracilis, 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
3 references- Preliminary taphonomic analyses of the mammalian microfauna.7
- Mid to late Holocene mammals from Bighorn Cave, Arizona3
- Implications of radiocarbon dates from Potter Creek Cave, Shasta County, California, USA1
Each of the 11 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 content3
Picture of Spilogale gracilis
- 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
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Spilogale gracilis microrhina · UMMZ:mammals:103458
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itSpilogale through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Merriam 1890