| Loxolophus Temporal range: Lower Palaeocene | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | † Arctocyonia |
| Family: | † Arctocyonidae |
| Genus: | † Loxolophus Cope, 1885 |
| Type species | |
| †Loxolophus hyattianus Cope, 1885 | |
| Species | |
| |
Loxolophus is a genus of large arctocyonid from the early Palaeocene of North America. Two species are currently recognised: the type species, Loxolophus hyattianus, and L. priscus.
The holotype of Loxolophus (AMNH 3121), a fragment of the left maxilla, was formally described by Edward Drinker Cope in 1885. Cope initially assigned it to Chriacus , and gave it the binomial name C. hyattianus. In the same paper, a single page later, he described Loxolophus adapinus. [1] Subsequently, they turned out to represent the same taxon, which at some point thereafter was recombined as Loxolophus hyattianus. [2] A second species, L. priscus, was named three years after the initial paper, also by Cope, who similarly assigned it to Chriacus. [3] Subsequently, it was reassigned to Protochriacus by William Berryman Scott in 1892, [4] then synonymised with Chriacus pugnax by George Gaylord Simpson in 1935, [5] and finally was assigned to Loxolophus by William Diller Matthew in 1937. [6]
A phylogenetic analysis by Peter E. Kondrashov and Spencer G. Lucas in 2015 recovered Arctocyonidae as a paraphyletic lineage of archaic ungulates, wherein Loxolophus forms a sister taxon to a clade consisting of Arctocyon , Desmatoclaenus , Protogonodon , Deuterogonodon and Tricentes . [2] Another analysis published that year, published by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami, recovered Loxolophus as part of a clade also including Anacodon, Oxyclaenus , and several other traditional arctocyonid genera, distantly related to pangolins. [7]