A Digital Endocranial Cast of the Early Paleocene (Puercan) 'Archaic' Mammal Onychodectes tisonensis (Eutheria: Taeniodonta).

ABSTRACT: Eutherian mammals-placentals and their closest extinct relatives-underwent a major radiation following the end-Cretaceous extinction, during which they evolved disparate anatomy and established new terrestrial ecosystems. Much about the timing, pace, and causes of this radiation remain unclear, in large part because we still know very little about the anatomy, phylogenetic relationships, and biology of the so-called 'archaic' eutherians that prospered during the ~10 million years after the extinction. We describe the first digital endocranial cast of a taeniodont, a bizarre group of eutherians that flourished in the early Paleogene, reconstructed from a computed tomography (CT) scan of a late Puercan (65.4 million year old) specimen of Onychodectes tisonensis that recovered most of

SUBMITTER: Napoli JG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5938319 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature