Ptolemaiida

Ptolemaiida is a taxon of wolf-sized afrothere mammals that lived in northern and eastern Africa during the Paleogene. The oldest fossils are from the latest Eocene strata of the Jebel Qatrani Formation, near the Fayum oasis in Egypt. A tooth is known from an Oligocene-aged stratum in Angola, and Miocene specimens (of Kelba) are known from Kenya and Uganda.

The origin of the Ptolemaiida is obscure, and debated. The type species was originally thought to be a primate, but, later, when elongated skulls with long canines of Ptolemaia and Qarunavus were found, they were then thought to be hyaenodontids, or giant, carnivorous relatives of the pantolestids Palaeosinopa, and of modern shrews The family Ptolemaiidae was elevated to order level in 1995, although some experts later placed the Ptolemaiidae within the pantolestids.