Veratalpa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Veratalpa Temporal range: Early to Middle Miocene | |
|---|---|
 | |
| astragalus of Veratalpa lugdunensiana, seen from above (a), the back (e), and below (i) | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Placentalia |
| Magnorder: | Boreoeutheria |
| Genus: | †Veratalpa Ameghino, 1905[1] |
| Type species | |
| †Veratalpa lugdunensiana Ameghino, 1905[1] | |
| Synonyms | |
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synonyms of species:
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Veratalpa ("true mole") is an extinct genus of placental mammals of uncertain affinities,[3] that lived in France from the early to middle Miocene. It is a monotypic genus with only one species, Veratalpa lugdunensiana, known from a single fossil of ankle bone.
In a 1905, the Argentine naturalist Florentino Ameghino described Veratalpa in an overview of the ankle boned from the early to middle Miocene of Vieux Collonges in France. He listed several species of the family Talpidae (moles and related species) from Vieux Collonges, including "species C", which he named as a new genus and species, Veratalpa lugdunensiana, in a footnote.[1] In a 1906 review of Ameghino's paper, Édouard Louis Trouessart affirmed that Veratalpa probably represented a new genus of mole, but noted that the specific name lugdunensiana would have been more correctly written "lugdunensis". According to Trouessart, the suffix -ana is appropriate for names that reference persons, but not for those that refer to places, such as this name, which is derived from Lugdunum (the Latin name for Lyon).[2]
In a 1974 review of Miocene European talpids, John Howard Hutchison wrote that the astragalus of Veratalpa lacked any features that would ally it with talpids and commented that it most likely came from a rodent.[4]
In their 1997 Classification of Mammals, Malcolm McKenna and Susan Bell listed Veratalpa as a member of Placentalia, with uncertain affinities.[3]