Trigonostylops
Trigonostylops is an extinct genus of South American meridiungulatan ungulate, from the Late Paleocene to Late Eocene of South America and Antarctica. It is the only member of the family Trigonostylopidae.

Rextron · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- TrigonostylopidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Astrapotheria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Eutheria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 18 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 57 Mya to 27.3 Mya.
42 occurrences of Trigonostylops on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
42 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
7 formations
- Sarmiento Formation24
- Las Flores Formation · Río Chico Group4
- Casamayor Formation1
- Pozo Formation1
- Divisadero Largo Formation1
- La Meseta Formation1
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The named rock units Trigonostylops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Trigonostylops and its relatives
EoceneWhere Trigonostylops and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
235 taxa- Notopithecus adapinus11 sites
- Notostylops murinus9 sites
- Pleurostylodon similis8 sites
- Antepithecus brachystephanus7 sites
- Henricosbornia lophodonta7 sites
- Archaeopithecus rogeri6 sites
- Isotemnus primitivus6 sites
- Notostylops6 sites
- Albertogaudrya5 sites
- Notostylops pendens5 sites
- Oldfieldthomasia debilitata5 sites
- Pleurostylodon modicus5 sites
- Thomashuxleya externa5 sites
- Transpithecus obtentus5 sites
- Victorlemoineia5 sites
- Eohyrax isotemnoides4 sites
- Isotemnus4 sites
- Maxschlosseria praeterita4 sites
- Notopithecus4 sites
- Notoungulata4 sites
- Polydolops thomasi4 sites
- Trigonostylopidae4 sites
- Albertogaudrya unica3 sites
- Amphidolops serrula3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 28 sites for Trigonostylops, 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- Biostratigraphy of the Casamayoran, Early Eocene of Patagonia8
- The beginning of the age of mammals in South America. Part II7
- Notices préliminaires sur des ongulés nouveaux des terrains crétacés de Patagonie [Preliminary notes on new ungulates from the Cretaceous terrains of Patagonia]6
- Nuevas especies de mamíferos, cretáceos y terciarios de la República Argentina [New species of mammals, Cretaceous and Tertiarty, from the Argentine Republic]3
- Cranial morphology and phylogenetic relationships of Trigonostylops wortmani, an Eocene South American native ungulate2
- New insights into the Kibenikhoria and Ernestokokenia faunas and the implications for the early Eocene of Patagonia, Argentina2
- Vertebrate paleontology, geology, and geochronology of the Tapera de López and Scarritt Pocket, Chubut Province, Argentina2
- Eocene mammals from volcaniclastic deposits of the Somun Cura Plateau: biostratigraphic implications for north Patagonia Paleogene1
- Astrapotheres from Cañadón Vaca, middle Eocene of central Patagonia. New insights on diversity, anatomy and early evolution of Astrapotheria1
- A 60-million-year Cenozoic history of western Amazonian ecosystems in Contamana, eastern Peru1
- The Egidio Feruglio's collection in the Museum of Geology and Palaeontology of the University of Padova: its importance to the knowledge of Cenozoic mammals from South America1
- Revised timing of the South American early Paleogene land mammal ages1
Each of the 42 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 Trigonostylops
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rextron
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itTrigonostylopidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ameghino 1897