OBJECT DOSSIER · SMITHSONIAN OPEN ACCESS

Swimming sea cow — Metaxytherium floridanum

SAGE Museum Deep Time scientific dossier

Artist / Creator

https://www.si.edu/object/metaxytherium-floridanum-hay-1922:nmnhpaleobiology_3449233

Date / Period

Miocene — Clarendonian · Middle to Late Miocene; Smithsonian catalog uses Clarendonian.

Object Type

mounted skeleton

Medium

unknown_needs_review

About This Object

Geologic period: Miocene — Clarendonian

Age: Middle to Late Miocene; Smithsonian catalog uses Clarendonian.

Feeding: Aquatic herbivore.

Locomotion: Fully aquatic swimming.

Evidence: The mounted skeleton directly records fully aquatic sirenian anatomy.

Why it matters: Placed beside Pezosiren, Metaxytherium shows how sirenians became fully committed to aquatic life.

Plain Language Identity: An extinct dugongid sea cow from the Miocene of Florida.

What You Are Looking At: A mounted fossil skeleton of Metaxytherium floridanum.

Ecosystem: Warm Miocene coastal marine environment of Florida.

Source Urls: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour/current-exhibits/deep-time-virtual-tour-fossil-list; https://www.si.edu/object/metaxytherium-floridanum-hay-1922:nmnhpaleobiology_3449233

Formation: Peace River Formation, Hawthorn Group

Find Location: Polk County, Florida, United States

Enrichment Method: SAGE curated research pass; title + scientific name + source scene matched; chronology and taxonomy conflicts retained rather than silently corrected; evidence separated from inference

Scientific name: Metaxytherium floridanum

Evidence / representation: comparative_taxon_visual

Why It Is In This SAGE Exhibit

comparative_taxon_visual

After the Dinosaurs: Mammals, Ice Ages and the World We Inherited.

Provenance

Smithsonian Deep Time source scene: Costs and Benefits of Living Large

Visual source institution: Wikimedia Commons

Exhibition History

Included in the SAGE Museum Dinosaurs & Deep Time staging exhibit.

Collection & Credit

Media license: CC0

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Subjects & Themes

Metaxytherium floridanum Miocene — Clarendonian mounted skeleton Costs and Benefits of Living Large After the Dinosaurs

ORIGINAL COLLECTION SOURCE

This object page stays inside SAGE Museum. The Smithsonian link below is provided only as the original scholarly collection record. It opens separately.

VIEW ORIGINAL SMITHSONIAN RECORD ↗