The treeshrews are small mammals native to the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia. They make up the entire order Scandentia, which split into two families: the Tupaiidae, and the Ptilocercidae.
Placental mammals are one of the three extant subdivisions of the class Mammalia, the other two being Monotremata and Marsupialia. Placentalia contains the vast majority of extant mammals, which are partly distinguished from monotremes and marsupials in that the fetus is carried in the uterus of its mother to a relatively late stage of development. The name is something of a misnomer considering that marsupials also nourish their fetuses via a placenta, though for a relatively briefer period, giving birth to less developed young which are then nurtured for a period inside the mother's pouch.
Colugos are arboreal gliding mammals that are native to Southeast Asia. Their closest evolutionary relatives are primates. There are just two living species of colugos: the Sunda flying lemur and the Philippine flying lemur. These two species make up the entire family Cynocephalidae and order Dermoptera.
Afrotheria is a clade of mammals, the living members of which belong to groups that are either currently living in Africa or of African origin: golden moles, elephant shrews, tenrecs, aardvarks, hyraxes, elephants, sea cows, and several extinct clades. Most groups of afrotheres share little or no superficial resemblance, and their similarities have only become known in recent times because of genetics and molecular studies. Many afrothere groups are found mostly or exclusively in Africa, reflecting the fact that Africa was an island continent from the Cretaceous until the early Miocene around 20 million years ago, when Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia.
Euarchontoglires is a clade and a superorder of mammals, the living members of which belong to one of the five following groups: rodents, lagomorphs, treeshrews, colugos, and primates.
The Euarchonta are a proposed grandorder of mammals: the order Scandentia (treeshrews), and its sister Primatomorpha mirorder, containing the Dermoptera or colugos and the primates.
Glires is a clade consisting of rodents and lagomorphs. The hypothesis that these form a monophyletic group has been long debated based on morphological evidence. Two morphological studies, published in 2001 and 2003, strongly support the monophyly of Glires. In particular, the 2003 study reported the discovery of fossil material of basal members of Glires, particularly the genera Mimotona, Gomphos, Heomys, Matutinia, Rhombomylus, and Sinomylus. Their description, in 2005, helped to bridge the gap between more typical rodents and lagomorphs. Data published in 2001, based on nuclear DNA, supported Glires as a sister of Euarchonta to form Euarchontoglires, but some genetic data from both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA have been less supportive. A study, published in 2007, investigating retrotransposon presence/absence data unambiguously supports the Glires hypothesis. Studies published in 2011 and 2015 place Scandentia as a sister clade of the Glires, invalidating Euarchonta as a clade.
Purgatorius is a genus of seven extinct eutherian species typically believed to be the earliest example of a primate or a proto-primate, a primatomorph precursor to the Plesiadapiformes, dating to as old as 66 million years ago. The first remains were reported in 1965, from what is now eastern Montana's Tullock Formation, specifically at Purgatory Hill in deposits believed to be about 63 million years old, and at Harbicht Hill in the lower Paleocene section of the Hell Creek Formation. Both locations are in McCone County, Montana.
The Archonta are a now-abandoned group of mammals, considered a superorder in some classifications, which consists of these orders:
Laurasiatheria is a superorder of placental mammals that groups together true insectivores (eulipotyphlans), bats (chiropterans), carnivorans, pangolins (pholidotes), even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls), odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls), and all their extinct relatives. From systematics and phylogenetic perspectives, it is subdivided into order Eulipotyphla and clade Scrotifera. It is a sister group to Euarchontoglires with which it forms the magnorder Boreoeutheria. Laurasiatheria was discovered on the basis of the similar gene sequences shared by the mammals belonging to it; no anatomical features have yet been found that unite the group. The Laurasiatheria clade is based on DNA sequence analyses and retrotransposon presence/absence data. The superorder originated on the northern supercontinent of Laurasia, after it split from Gondwana when Pangaea broke up. Its last common ancestor is supposed to have diversified ca. 76 to 90 million years ago.
The Chimpanzee Genome Project was an effort to determine the DNA sequence of the chimpanzee genome. Sequencing began in 2005 and by 2013 twenty-four individual chimpanzees had been sequenced. This project was folded into the Great Ape Genome Project.
Ferae is a mirorder of placental mammals that groups together clades Pan-Carnivora and Pholidotamorpha. The Ferae is a sister group to the clade Pan-Euungulata and together they make grandorder Ferungulata.
Cimolesta is an extinct order of non-placental eutherian mammals. Cimolestans had a wide variety of body shapes, dentition and lifestyles, though the majority of them were small to medium-sized general mammals that bore superficial resemblances to rodents, lagomorphs, mustelids, and marsupials.
Plesiadapiformes is a group of Primates, a sister of the Dermoptera. While none of the groups normally directly assigned to this group survived, the group appears actually not to be literally extinct as the remaining primates appear to be derived Plesiadapiformes, as a sister of e.g. the Carpolestidae. The term Plesiadapiformes may still be used for all primates which are not crown primates, but this usage is paraphyletic. When the crown primates are cladistically granted, it becomes an obsolete junior synonym to primates. Purgatorius is believed to be a basal Plesiadapiformes.
Boreoeutheria is a magnorder of placental mammals that groups together superorders Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria. With a few exceptions male animals in the clade have a scrotum, an ancestral feature of the clade. The sub-clade Scrotifera was named after this feature.
The Sunda flying lemur, also known as Sunda colugo, Malayan flying lemur and Malayan colugo, is a colugo species. It is native throughout Southeast Asia ranging from southern Myanmar, Thailand, southern Vietnam, Malaysia to Singapore and Indonesia.
The pen-tailed treeshrew is a treeshrew of the family Ptilocercidae native to southern Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and some Indonesian islands.
Tupaiidae is one of two families of treeshrews, the other family being Ptilocercidae. The family contains three living genera and 19 living species. The family name derives from tupai, the Malay word for treeshrew and also for squirrel which tupaiids superficially resemble. The former genus Urogale was disbanded in 2011 when the Mindanao treeshrew was moved to Tupaia based on a molecular phylogeny.
Artiofabula is a clade made up of the Suina and the Cetruminantia. The clade was found in molecular phylogenetic analyses and contradicted traditional relationships based on morphological analyses.
Sundatheria is a proposed clade of placental mammals. It includes the orders Scandentia and Dermoptera. An alternative phylogeny is the Primatomorpha hypothesis.
