The skull of leptictid insectivorans and the higher-level classification of eutherian mammals. Bulletin of the AMNH ; v. 183, article 1
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Date
1986
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[New York] : American Museum of Natural History
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Abstract
"The excellent cranioskeletal representation of early Tertiary leptictids permits broad comparisons with major groups of living and better preserved fossil mammals. Such comparisons reveal that leptictids are indeed closely related to lipotyphlan insectivorans. This conclusion supports intepretations dating back to the beginning of this century. Such interpretations were abandoned in the last two decades in favor of the view that leptictids were an isolated eutherian clade with no clear affinity to a particular eutherian order. Other eutherian higher categories supported by cranial homologies are an edentate-pholidotan group, a dermopteran-chiropteran group, a glires (rodent-lagomorph) group, a glires-macroscelidid group, an ungulate (sans tubulidentate) group, and a subset of ungulates comprising hyracoids, proboscideans and sirenians. There is some evidence that the edentate-pholidotan clade represents a very remote branch of the Eutheria, and that all other major groups of eutherians form a monophyletic clade (cohort Epitheria). A higher-level classification of the Eutheria that reflects the stronger associations is proposed"--P. 3.
Description
111 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-111).
Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-111).
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