| Amphilemuridae Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Pholidocercus hassiacus fossil at Museum of Paleontology, Tübingen | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Eulipotyphla |
| Family: | † Amphilemuridae Hill, 1953 |
| Synonyms [1] | |
Dormaaliidae Quinet 1964 | |
The Amphilemuridae are a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Eulipotyphla, from the Eocene of Europe and North America.
Amphilemurids were generally small in size and may have resembled moonrats in life. Some species had spines like those of hedgehogs, while others were almost free of spines or had bristly coats. Most species are known only from teeth.
The family Amphilemuridae was first described in 1953 by Hill, and was included in the order Insectivora, which later proved to be polyphyletic. Currently the amphilemurids are considered basal members of the order Eulipotyphla, although Hooker and Russell (2012) considered them to belong to the order Macroscelidea. [2]
Family †AmphilemuridaeHill, 1953
Eulipotyphla is an order of mammals suggested by molecular methods of phylogenetic reconstruction, which includes the laurasiatherian members of the now-invalid polyphyletic order Lipotyphla, but not the afrotherian members.
Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a perceived resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and their superficial similarity with shrews in the order Eulipotyphla. However, phylogenetic analysis has revealed that elephant shrews are not properly classified with true shrews, but are in fact more closely related to elephants than to shrews. In 1997, the biologist Jonathan Kingdon proposed that they instead be called "sengis", a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa, and in 1998, they were classified into the new clade Afrotheria.
Leptictidium is an extinct genus of small mammals that were likely bipedal. Comprising eight species, they resembled today's bilbies, bandicoots, and elephant shrews, and occupied a similar niche. They are especially interesting for their combination of characteristics typical of primitive eutherians with highly specialized adaptations, such as powerful hind legs and a long tail which aided in locomotion. They were omnivorous, their diet a combination of insects, lizards, frogs, and small mammals. Leptictidium and other leptictids are not placentals, but are non-placental eutherians, although they are closely related to placental eutherians. They appeared in the Lower Eocene, a time of warm temperatures and high humidity, roughly fifty million years ago. Although they were widespread throughout Europe, they became extinct around thirty-five million years ago with no descendants, as they were adapted to live in forest ecosystems and were unable to adapt to the open plains of the Oligocene.
Erinaceidae is a family in the order Eulipotyphla, consisting of the hedgehogs and moonrats. Until recently, it was assigned to the order Erinaceomorpha, which has been subsumed with the paraphyletic Soricomorpha into Eulipotyphla. Eulipotyphla has been shown to be monophyletic; Soricomorpha is paraphyletic because both Soricidae and Talpidae share a more recent common ancestor with Erinaceidae than with solenodons.
Tillodontia is an extinct suborder of eutherian mammals known from the Early Paleocene to Late Eocene of China, the Late Paleocene to Middle Eocene of North America where they display their maximum species diversity, the Middle Eocene of Pakistan, and the Early Eocene of Europe. Leaving no descendants, they are most closely related to the pantodonts, another extinct group. The tillodonts were medium- to large-sized animals that probably fed on roots and tubers in temperate to subtropical habitats.
Archaeonycteris is an archaic bat genus whose fossilised remains have been found in Germany, France, England and India.
Epoicotheriidae is an extinct paraphyletic family of insectivorous placental mammals within extinct order Palaeanodonta, that lived in North America, Asia and Europe from the late Paleocene to early Oligocene. Epoicotheriids were fossorial mammals. Late Eocene/early Oligocene genera were highly specialized animals that were convergent with the talpids, golden moles and marsupial mole in the structure of their skulls and forelimbs, and would have had a similar lifestyle as subterranean burrowers.
Phenacodontidae is an extinct family of large herbivorous mammals traditionally placed in the “wastebasket taxon” Condylarthra, which may instead represent early-stage perissodactyls. They lived from the late early Paleocene to early middle Eocene and their fossil remains have been found in North America and Europe. The only unequivocal Asian phenacodontid is Lophocion asiaticus.
Duerotherium is an extinct genus of Palaeogene artiodactyls known only from the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Eocene, which contains one species D. sudrei. It, like other members of the Anoplotheriidae, was endemic to Western Europe. The anoplotheriine was described from a left fragment of a maxilla from the Mazaterón Formation of the Duero Basin in 2009. Its dentition is mostly typical of the Anoplotheriinae but differs by an elongated plus triangular 3rd upper premolar and very specific traits of the molars. It is thought to have been part of an endemic faunal assemblage that evolved within the Iberian Peninsula by the Middle Eocene, where climates were subtropical.
Brontotheriidae is a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Perissodactyla, the order that includes horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs. Superficially, they looked rather like rhinos with some developing bony nose horns, and were some of the earliest mammals to have evolved large body sizes. They lived around 56–34 million years ago, until the very close of the Eocene. Brontotheres had a Holarctic distribution, with the exception of Western Europe: they occupied North America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. They were the first fossilized mammals to be discovered west of the Mississippi, and were first discovered in South Dakota.
Palaeochiropterygidae is a family of extinct bats. It was originally erected by the Swiss naturalist Pierre Revilliod in 1917 after discoveries of Palaeochiropteryx fossils from the Messel Pit of Germany. Palaeochiropterygidae was merged into Archaeonycteridae by Kurten and Anderson in 1980, but modern authorities specializing in bat fossils maintain the distinction between the two. It was classified to the unranked clade Microchiropteramorpha by Smith et al. in 2007.
The Lignites de Soissonais is a geologic formation in the Var, Marne departments of France. It preserves fossils dating back to the Ypresian stage of the Eocene period.
This paleomammalogy list records new fossil mammal taxa that were described during the year 2009, as well as notes other significant paleomammalogy discoveries and events which occurred during that year.
Onychonycteridae is an extinct family of bats known only from the early Eocene of Europe and North America. The type species, Onychonycteris finneyi, was described in 2008 from two nearly complete skeletons found in the Green River Formation of southwestern Wyoming. Since that time a number of previously described fossil bat species have been assigned to Onychonycteridae, as well as two more recently discovered species.
Nyctitheriidae is a family of extinct eulipotyphlan insectivores known from the Paleocene and Eocene epochs of North America and Asia and persisting into the Oligocene of Europe. Several genera, including Nyctitherium, Paradoxonycteris, and Wyonycteris, have initially been described as bats, although the family is more frequently placed in the order Eulipotyphla.
Jens Lorenz Franzen was a German paleontologist. He was the head of Paleoanthropology and Quaternary at Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt and participated in fossil excavation in Germany. He worked with scientific excavations and discovered many previously unknown fossil mammal species.
The Silveirinha Formation is an Early Eocene geologic formation of the Mondego Basin in the Região Centro of central-western Portugal. The sandstones, siltstones and conglomerates were deposited in an alluvial environment.
This is an overview of the paleofauna of the Eocene Messel Formation as explored by the Messel Pit excavations in Germany. A former quarry and now UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Messel Formation preserves what once were a series of anoxic lakes surrounded by a sub-tropical rainforest during the Middle Eocene, approximately 47 Ma.
Ephelcomenus is an extinct genus of Palaeogene artiodactyls endemic to Western Europe. It contains one species E. filholi, which was first described by Richard Lydekker in 1889 but eventually classified to its own genus by the Swiss palaeontologist Johannes Hürzeler in 1938. It has an uncertain stratigraphic range, but some sources suggest that it was present in the Oligocene after the Grande Coupure turnover event of western Europe.