Plesielephantiformes
Extinct suborder of mammals
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Plesielephantiformes is a proposed suborder of the Proboscidea, the group containing elephants and their close relatives. It was named and circumscribed in a 2001 study by Jeheskel Shoshani and colleagues to include Deinotheriidae, as well as Numidotheriidae and Barytheriidae.[1] While originally proposed to represent a monophyletic clade, based on the supposed unifying character of having bilophodont teeth,[1] most modern phylogenetic studies of Proboscidea find the group to be paraphyletic, with Deinotheriidae more closely related to Elephantiformes than to other supposed members of the group.[2]
| Plesielephantiformes Temporal range: Early Eocene to Early Pleistocene | |
|---|---|
| |
| Partial skeleton of a Deinotherium gigantissimum in the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History in Chisinau. | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Proboscidea |
| Suborder: | †Plesielephantiformes Shoshani et al., 2001 |
| Families | |
Cladogram after Hautier et al. 2021:[2]
