Leptictida
Sign in to saveLeptictida (leptos iktis "small/slender weasel") is a possibly paraphyletic extinct order of eutherian mammals. Their classification is contentious: according to cladistic studies, they may be (distantly) related to Euarchontoglires (rodents, primates and their relatives), although they are more recently regarded as the first branch to split from basal eutherians. One recent large-scale cladistic analysis of eutherian mammals favored lepictidans as close to the placental crown-clade; and several other recent analyses that included data from Cretaceous non-eutherian mammals found Leptictis to b
Wikidata facts
- Parent taxon
- Placentalia
- Image
- Leptictidium auderiense skeleton.JPG
Show 6 more facts
- Commons category
- Leptictida
- taxon name
- Leptictida
- taxon rank
- order
- topic's main category
- Category:Leptictida
- start time
- 70000000-0
- end time
- 33000000-0
Sources (1)
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Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Description
- Classification
- Notes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Leptictida (leptos iktis "small/slender weasel") is a possibly paraphyletic extinct order of eutherian mammals. Their classification is contentious: according to cladistic studies, they may be (distantly) related to Euarchontoglires (rodents, primates and their relatives), although they are more recently regarded as the first branch to split from basal eutherians. One recent large-scale cladistic analysis of eutherian mammals favored lepictidans as close to the placental crown-clade; and several other recent analyses that included data from Cretaceous non-eutherian mammals found Leptictis to belong to the superorder Afrotheria.
The most recent phylogenetic studies recover it as actually a paraphyletic assemblage leading to Placentalia.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Leptictida” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.