Phataginus

African tree pangolin Temporal range: 16.58–0  Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N middle Miocene - Present [1]
Pangolins from genus Phataginus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Pholidota
Family:	Manidae
Subfamily:	Phatagininae Gaubert, 2017 [2]
Genus:	Phataginus Rafinesque, 1821 [3]
Type species
Phataginus tetradactyla Linnaeus, 1766
Species
Phataginus tetradactyla Phataginus tricuspis
Phataginus tetradactyla    Phataginus tricuspis
Synonyms [4] [5]
synonyms of subfamily: Uromaninae (Pocock, 1924) Uromanini (Pocock, 1924) synonyms of genus: Pangolinus(Rafinesque, 1821) Paramanis(Pocock, 1924) Phatages(Sundevall, 1843) Phatagin(Gray, 1865) Phataginus(Rafinesque, 1815) [nomen nudum] Triglochinopholis(Fitzinger, 1872) Uromanis(Pocock, 1924) [6]

African tree pangolin (Phataginus) is a genus of African pangolins from subfamily Phatagininae, within family Manidae. ^[7] Its members are the more arboreal of the African pangolins. ^{[8] [9] [10]}

From 2010 to 2019, at least 895,000 pangolins from the genus Phataginus were illegally trafficked. The animal is hunted and poached for its scales and meat, and is often used in making traditional medicine in places such as China and Vietnam. Attempts to protect these mammals from trafficking and extinction are ongoing; unfortunately their slow reproduction rate stymies population recovery. Currently the tree pangolin is listed as vulnerable. All pangolin species have been listed as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. ^[11]

Etymology

Constantine Rafinesque (1821) formed the Neo-Latin generic name Phataginus from the French term phatagin, adopted by Count Buffon (1763) after the reported local name phatagin or phatagen used in the East Indies.

Taxonomy

Subfamily: Phatagininae (small African pangolins) Genus: Phataginus (African tree pangolin) Phataginus tetradactyla (Long-tailed pangolin) Phataginus tricuspis (Tree pangolin)

Phylogeny

Phylogenetic position of genus Phataginus within family Manidae based on Wangmo (2025.) study: ^[1]

Manidae	Maninae Smutsiinae  Phatagininae   Phataginus  Phataginus tetradactyla Phataginus tricuspis

References

1. Wangmo, Lenrik Konchok; Ghosh, Avijit; Dolker, Stanzin; Joshi, Bheem Dutt; Sharma, Lalit Kumar; Thakur, Mukesh (2025). "Indo-Burmese pangolin (Manis indoburmanica): A novel phylogenetic species of pangolin evolved in Asia". Mammalian Biology. 105 (5): 691–698. doi:10.1007/s42991-024-00475-7.
2. Gaubert, Philippe; Patel, Riddhi P.; Veron, Géraldine; Goodman, Steven M.; Willsch, Maraike; Vasconcelos, Raquel; Lourenço, André; Sigaud, Marie; Justy, Fabienne; Joshi, Bheem Dutt; Fickel, Jörns; Wilting, Andreas (2017). ""Phylogeography of the small Indian civet and origin of introductions to Western Indian Ocean islands."". Journal of Heredity. 108 (3): 270–279. doi:10.1093/jhered/esw085.
3. Rafinesque, Constantine Samuel (1821). "Sur le genre Manis et description d'une nouvelle espèce: Manis ceonyx". 7. Annales générales des sciences physiques, Brux.: 214–21.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
4. "Manidae".
5. "Manis pentadactyla" (PDF). IUCN SSG Pangolin Specialist Group.
6. "Taxonomic Swap 25736". iNaturalist. 2017-10-08. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
7. Schlitter, D.A. (2005). "Order Pholidota". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 531. ISBN   978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC   62265494.
8. Gaudin, Timothy (2009). "The Phylogeny of Living and Extinct Pangolins (Mammalia, Pholidota) and Associated Taxa: A Morphology Based Analysis" (PDF). Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 16 (4). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Science+Business Media: 235–305. doi:10.1007/s10914-009-9119-9. S2CID   1773698. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-25. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
9. du Toit, Z.; du Plessis, M.; Dalton, D. L.; Jansen, R.; Paul Grobler, J.; Kotzé, A. (2017). "Mitochondrial genomes of African pangolins and insights into evolutionary patterns and phylogeny of the family Manidae". BMC Genomics. 18 (1): 746. doi: 10.1186/s12864-017-4140-5 . PMC   5609056 . PMID   28934931.
10. Philippe Gaubert, Agostinho Antunes, Hao Meng, Lin Miao, Stéphane Peigné, Fabienne Justy, Flobert Njiokou, Sylvain Dufour, Emmanuel Danquah, Jayanthi Alahakoon, Erik Verheyen, William T Stanley, Stephen J O’Brien, Warren E Johnson, Shu-Jin Luo (2018) The Complete Phylogeny of Pangolins: Scaling Up Resources for the Molecular Tracing of the Most Trafficked Mammals on Earth
11. Gaubert, P. (2020). "Development and characterization of 20 polymorphic microsatellite markers for the white-bellied pangolin Phataginus tricuspis (Mammalia, Pholidota)". Molecular Biology Reports. 47 (6): 4827–4833. doi:10.1007/s11033-020-05511-6. PMC   7230135 . PMID   32419053.