Epitheria
| Epitheria Temporal range: Late Cretaceous - Recent
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| European mole (Boreoeutheria) | |
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| African bush elephant (Afrotheria) | |
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Epitheria
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Epitherians comprise all the placental mammals except the Xenarthra. They are primarily characterized by having a stirrup-shaped stapes in the middle ear, which allows for passage of a blood vessel. This is in contrast to the column-shaped stapes found in marsupials, monotremes, and xenarthrans. They are also characterized by having a shorter fibula relative to the tibia.
Epitheria — like Xenarthra and Afrotheria — originated after the K-Pg boundary 66 million years ago, with the placental diversification occurring within the first hundred thousand years after the K-Pg event and the first modern placental orders began appearing 2–3 million years later.[1] Epitheres are one of the most successful groups of animals.
The monophyly of Epitheria has been challenged by molecular phylogenetic studies.[2] While preliminary analysis of a set of retroposons shared by both Afrotheria, and Boreoeutheria (presence/absence data) supported the Epitheria clade,[3] more extensive analysis of such transposable element insertions around the time of the divergence of Xenarthra, Afrotheria, and Boreoeutheria strongly support the hypothesis of a near-concomitant origin (trifurcation) of these three superorders of mammals.[4][5]
Another analysis suggests that the root of this clade lies between the Atlantogenata and Boreoeutheria.[6]
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Alternative hypotheses
Alternative hypotheses place either Atlantogenata and Boreoeutheria, or Afrotheria and Exafroplacentalia (Notolegia) at the base of the tree:
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One Bayesian analysis places the root between Atlantogenata and Boreoeutheria.[7]
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ For example: Springer, Mark S., Michael J. Stanhope, Ole Madsen, and Wilfried W. de Jong. 2004. Molecules consolidate the placental mammal tree" Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19:430–438.
- ↑ Kriegs, Jan Ole, Gennady Churakov, Martin Kiefmann, Ursula Jordan, Juergen Brosius, and Juergen Schmitz. (2006) Retroposed Elements as archives for the evolutionary history of placental mammals" PLoS Biol 4(4) e91.
- ↑ Nishihara, H., Maruyama, S. & Okada, N. 2009. Retroposon analysis and recent geological data suggest near-simultaneous divergence of these three superorders of mammals. PNAS 106: 5235-40.
- ↑ Churakov, G., Kriegs, J.O., Baertsch, R., Zemann, A., Brosius, J. & Schmitz, J. 2009. Mosaic retroposon insertion patterns in placental mammals. Genome Research 19: 868-75.
- ↑ Song S, Liu L, Edwards SV, Wu S (2012) Resolving conflict in eutherian mammal phylogeny using phylogenomics and the multispecies coalescent model. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
- ↑ Morgan CC, Foster PG, Webb AE, Pisani D, McInerney JO, O'Connell MJ (2013) Heterogeneous models place the root of the placental mammal phylogeny" Mol Biol Evol 30(9) 2145-256 doi:10.1093/molbev/mst117
External links
- Summary of molecular support for Epitheria
- Waddell PJ, Kishino H, Ota R. 2001. A phylogenetic foundation for comparative mammalian genomics. Genome Inform Ser Workshop Genome Inform 12: 141–154
- Mark S. Springer, William J. Murphy, Eduardo Eizirik, and Stephen J. O'Brien (Edited by Morris Goodman). 2002 Placental mammal diversification and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
- Wildman D.E.; Chen C.; Erez O.; Grossman L.I.; Goodman M.; Romero R. 2006. Evolution of the mammalian placenta revealed by phylogenetic analysis" PNAS 103 (9) 3203–3208
- Nikolaev, S., Montoya-Burgos, J.I., Margulies, E.H., Rougemont, J., Nyffeler, B., Antonarakis, S.E. 2007. Early history of mammals is elucidated with the ENCODE multiple species sequencing data" PLoS Genet 3:e2, doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030002.
- Gennady Churakov, Jan Ole Kriegs, Robert Baertsch, Anja Zemann, Jürgen Brosius, Jürgen Schmitz. 2008. Mosaic retroposon insertion patterns in placental mammals
