Multituberculata is an extinct order of rodent-like mammals with a fossil record spanning over 130 million years. They first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, and reached a peak diversity during the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene. They eventually declined from the mid Paleocene onwards, disappearing from the known fossil record in the late Eocene. They are the most diverse order of Mesozoic mammals with more than 200 species known, ranging from mouse-sized to beaver-sized. These species occupied a diversity of ecological niches, ranging from burrow-dwelling to squirrel-like arborealism to jerboa-like hoppers. Multituberculates are usually placed as crown mammals outside either of the two main groups of living mammals—Theria, including placentals and marsupials, and Monotremata—but usually as closer to Theria than to monotremes. They are considered to be closely related to Euharamiyida and Gondwanatheria as part of Allotheria.
Henkelodon was a small mammal of the Upper Jurassic. It was a relatively early member of the extinct order Multituberculata. Henkelodon was a European herbivore that lived during the "age of the dinosaurs". It lies within the suborder "Plagiaulacida" and family Paulchoffatiidae.
Catopsbaatar is a genus of multituberculate, an extinct order of rodent-like mammals. It lived in what is now Mongolia during the late Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 72 million years ago. The first fossils were collected in the early 1970s, and the animal was named as a new species of the genus Djadochtatherium in 1974, D. catopsaloides. The specific name refers to the animal's similarity to the genus Catopsalis. The species was moved to the genus Catopsalis in 1979, and received its own genus in 1994. Five skulls, one molar, and one skeleton with a skull are known; the last is the genus' most complete specimen. Catopsbaatar was a member of the family Djadochtatheriidae.
Taeniolabidoidea is a group of extinct mammals known from North America and Asia. They were the largest members of the extinct order Multituberculata, as well as the largest non-therian mammals. Lambdopsalis even provides direct fossil evidence of mammalian fur in a fairly good state of preservation for a 60-million-year-old animal. Some of these animals were large for their time; Taeniolabis taoensis is the largest known multituberculate and though smaller, Yubaatar is the largest known Mesozoic Asian multituberculate. Average members of the Taeniolaboidea were about beaver-sized and the largest even reached sizes comparable to the largest beavers like Castoroides, up to about 100 kilograms.
Catopsalis is a genus of extinct mammal from the Paleocene of North America. This animal was a relatively large member of the extinct order of Multituberculata. Most Multituberculates were much smaller.
Sphenopsalis is a genus of extinct mammal from the Paleocene of Central Asia. It was a member of the extinct order Multituberculata, and lies within the suborder Cimolodonta and the superfamily Taeniolabidoidea. The genus was named by William Diller Matthew, W. Granger and George Gaylord Simpson in 1928.
Taeniolabis is a genus of extinct multituberculate mammal from the Paleocene of North America.
Barbatodon is a mammal genus from the Upper Cretaceous period. It lived in Transylvania at the same time as some of the last dinosaurs and was a member of the extinct order of Multituberculata. It is within the suborder of Cimolodonta, and the family Kogaionidae. The genus Barbatodon was named by Rãdulescu R. and Samson P. in 1986.
Repenomamus is a genus of opossum- to badger-sized gobiconodontid mammal containing two species, Repenomamus robustus and Repenomamus giganticus. Both species are known from fossils found in China that date to the early Cretaceous period, about 125-123.2 million years ago. R. robustus is one of several Mesozoic mammals for which there is good evidence that it fed on vertebrates, including dinosaurs, though it is not possible to determine if it actively hunted live dinosaurs or scavenged dead ones. R. giganticus is among the largest mammals known from the Mesozoic era.
Hagryphus is a monospecific genus of caenagnathid dinosaur from southern Utah that lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now the Kaiparowits Formation of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. The type and only species, Hagryphus giganteus, is known only from an incomplete but articulated left manus and the distal portion of the left radius. It was named in 2005 by Lindsay E. Zanno and Scott D. Sampson. Hagryphus has an estimated length of 2.4–3 metres and weight of 50 kilograms.
Haramiyida is a possibly polyphyletic order of mammaliaform cynodonts or mammals of controversial taxonomic affinites. Their teeth, which are by far the most common remains, resemble those of the multituberculates. However, based on Haramiyavia, the jaw is less derived; and at the level of evolution of earlier basal mammals like Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, with a groove for ear ossicles on the dentary. If they are early multituberculates, they would be the longest lived mammalian clade of all time. However, a more recent study, in November 2015, may dispute this and suggested the Haramiyida were not crown mammals, but were part of an earlier offshoot of mammaliaformes instead. It is also disputed whether the Late Triassic species are closely related to the Jurassic and Cretaceous members belonging to Euharamiyida/Eleutherodontida, as some phylogenetic studies recover the two groups as unrelated, recovering the Triassic haramiyidians as non-mammalian cynodonts, while recovering the Euharamiyida as crown-group mammals closely related to multituberculates.
Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska was a Polish paleobiologist. In the mid-1960s, she led a series of Polish-Mongolian paleontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert. She was the first woman to serve on the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences.
The Nacimiento Formation is a sedimentary rock formation found in the San Juan Basin of western New Mexico. It has an age of 61 to 65.7 million years, corresponding to the early and middle Paleocene. The formation has yielded an abundance of fossils from shortly after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that provide clues to the recovery and diversification of mammals following the extinction event.
Utahceratops is an extinct genus of ceratopsian dinosaur that lived approximately 76.4~75.5 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Utah. Utahceratops was a large-sized, robustly-built, ground-dwelling, quadrupedal herbivore, that could grow up to an estimated 5–7 m (16–23 ft) long.
Taeniolabididae is one of the two multituberculate clades within Taeniolabidoidea. Originally basically synonymous with Taeniolabidoidea, it has more recently been found to be a specific clade including Kimbetopsalis, Taeniolabis and some former members of the Catopsalis wastebasket taxon, as opposed to Lambdopsalidae, which includes most other genera outside of Valenopsalis and possibly Bubodens, both of which more basal taxa.
Rugosodon is an extinct genus of multituberculate (rodent-like) mammals from eastern China that lived 160 million years ago during the Jurassic period. The discovery of its type species and currently only known species Rugosodon eurasiaticus was reported in the 16 August 2013 issue of Science.
Valenopsalis is an extinct mammal from the Paleocene of North America (more specifically, Puercan-aged deposits in Wyoming, Montana and Saskatchewan. Originally referred to the genus Catopsalis, it has more recently been moved to its own genus as the former was understood to be a wastebasket taxon. It is currently considered to be the most basal representative of Taeniolabidoidea.
Lambdopsalidae is a family of extinct multituberculate mammals from the Late Paleocene of Asia. They are part of Taeniolabidoidea, a clade otherwise present in the Early Paleocene of North America; lambdopsalids, therefore, probably evolved from a single radiation that spread into Asia from North America in the mid-Paleocene or earlier. They are represented by the genus Lambdopsalis, Sphenopsalis and Prionessus.
A plagiaulacoid is a type of blade-like, most often serrated, tooth present in various mammal groups, usually a premolar. Among modern species it is present chiefly on diprotodontian marsupials, which have both the upper and lower first premolars converted into serrated blades. However, various other extinct groups also possessed plagiaulacoids. These would be multituberculates, some "Plesiadapiformes" such as Carpolestes and various metatherians such as Epidolops and various early diprotodontians. In many of these only a lower premolar became converted into a blade, while the upper premolars showed less specialisation.
Yubaatar is a genus of multituberculate, an extinct order of rodent-like mammals, which lived in what is now China during the Late Cretaceous. The first specimen was discovered in the Qiupa Formation of Luanchuan County, in the Henan Province. The specimen consists of a partial skeleton with a nearly complete skull, and was made the holotype of the new genus and species Yubaartar zhongyuanensis by the Chinese palaeontologist Li Xu and colleagues in 2015. The generic name consists of the word Yu, which is the pinyin spelling of the Chinese character for the Henan Province, and the Mongolian word baatar, which means "hero", a word commonly used as suffix in the names of Asian multituberculates. The specific name comes from Zhongyuan, an ancient name for the geographic area of the province.
