Boreoeutheria
Magnorder of mammals containing Laurasiatheria and Euarchontoglires
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Boreoeutheria (/boʊˌriːoʊjuːˈθɛriə/) is a magnorder of placental mammals that groups together superorders Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria.[2][3][6] The clade includes groups as diverse as giraffes, pigs, zebras, rhinoceroses, dogs, cats, rabbits, mice, bats, whales, dolphins, and primates (monkeys, apes, and humans).
| Boreoeutheria Temporal range: Late Cretaceous to present | |
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| From top to right: European hedgehog, Lyle's flying fox, tiger, Indian pangolin, red deer and white rhino. Representing the orders: Eulipotyphla, Chiroptera, Carnivora, Pholidota, Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla, comprising Laurasiatheria. | |
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| From top to right: Desmarest's hutia, Sunda colugo, brown rat, European hare, lar gibbon, human playing with a rabbit, ring-tailed lemur, and a common treeshrew. Representing the orders: Dermoptera, Rodentia, Primates, Lagomorpha, and Scandentia, comprising Euarchontoglires. | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Clade: | Eutheria |
| Infraclass: | Placentalia |
| Magnorder: | Boreoeutheria Springer & de Jong, 2001;[2] Murphy et al., 2001[3] |
| Superorders | |
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For other potential members, see text | |
| Synonyms | |
With a few exceptions,[a] male boreoeutherians have a scrotum, an ancestral feature of the clade.[7][8] The sub-clade Scrotifera was named after this feature.[9]
Etymology
The name of this magnorder comes from Ancient Greek words:[citation needed]
- Βορέας (Boreas) meaning 'north wind' or 'the North',
- εὐ- (eu-) meaning 'good', 'right', or 'true',
- and θηρίον (thēríon) meaning 'beast'.
Boreoeutherian ancestor
The majority of earliest known fossils belonging to this group date to about 66 million years ago, shortly after the K-Pg extinction event, though molecular data suggest they may have originated earlier, during the Cretaceous period.[10][11] This is further supported with the earliest dated species of the pan-euungulate genus Protungulatum[1] (P. coombsi about 70.6 to 66.043 Ma., and P. gorgun about 70.6 to 63.8 Ma.), alongside pan-carnivoran species Altacreodus magnus (about 70.6 to 66.043 Ma.), periptychid species Paleoungulatum hooleyi (about 70.6 to 66.043 Ma.), and arctocyonid species Baioconodon nordicus (about 70.6 to 63.8 Ma.).[12]
The common ancestor of Boreoeutheria lived between 107 and 90 million years ago.[10] The concept of a boreoeutherian ancestor was first proposed in 2004 in the journal Genome Research.[13][14] The paper's authors claimed that the genome sequence of the boreoeutherian ancestor could be computationally predicted with 98% accuracy, but would "take a few years and a lot of money". It is estimated to contain three billion base pairs.[13]
Classification and phylogeny
Taxonomy
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See also
Notes
- Exceptional clades whose males lack the usual boreoeutherian scrotum are moles, hedgehogs, pangolins, some pinnipeds, rhinoceroses, tapirs, hippopotamuses, and cetaceans.