Thylamys pusillus

The common fat-tailed mouse opossum is a species of opossum in the family Didelphidae. It occurs in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay in chaco and Andean foothill habitats. Its head-and-body length is about 75 to 120 mm, and its tail length is about 90 to 134 mm. Its dorsal fur is brownish gray, and its ventral fur is yellowish to white. The legs and cheeks are the same color as the ventral surface. Its tail is sharply bicolored. A ring of faintly darker fur surrounds each eye. Its tail often lacks fat deposits, but does not always.

Thylamys pusillus

Chermundy · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
ThylamysPBDB
Diet
insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Marmosinae
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Didelphidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Marmosinae

Time the record covers

At least 3.7 million years on record.

The record covers at least 3.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5 Mya to 0 Mya.

Miocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesHolocene — about 1 of 2 occurrences5.1–5.0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences5.0–4.8 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.8–4.6 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.6–4.4 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.4–4.2 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.2–4.0 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences4.0–3.9 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.9–3.7 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences183 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.8 Mya11.7 ka5.5 Mya0 Mya

2 occurrences of Thylamys pusillus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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

2 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

1 formation

Monte Hermoso — 38.97°S, 61.70°W

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The named rock units Thylamys pusillus 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.

Thylamys pusillus and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Thylamys pusillus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

124 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Thylamys pusillus, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 Thylamys pusillus

Credit
Chermundy
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thylamys pusillus 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 itThylamys through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Desmarest 1804