Anthracotheriidae
Anthracotheriidae Temporal range:
| |
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Anthracotherium | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | Artiodactyla |
Suborder: | Whippomorpha |
Superfamily: | Hippopotamoidea
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Family: | †Anthracotheriidae Leidy, 1869 |
Genera and subfamilies[1][2] | |
Anthracotheriidae is a
In life, the average anthracothere would have resembled a skinny hippopotamus with a comparatively small, narrow head and most likely pig-like in general appearance.[5] They had four or five toes on each foot, and broad feet suited to walking on soft mud. They had full sets of about 44 teeth with five semicrescentric cusps on the upper molars,[3] which, in some species, were adapted for digging up the roots of aquatic plants.[6]
Evolutionary relationships
Some skeletal characters of anthracotheres suggest they are related to hippos.[7]
The nature of the sediments in which they are fossilized implies they were amphibious, which supports the view, based on anatomical evidence, that they were ancestors of the hippopotamuses.
Recent evidence, gained from comparative gene sequencing, further suggests that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales,[11][12] so, if anthracotheres are stem hippos, they would also be related to whales in a clade provisionally called Whippomorpha.
However, the earliest known anthracotheres appear in the fossil record in the middle
Another study has offered a suggestion that anthracotheres are part of a clade that also consists of
References
- ISBN 978-0-521-35519-3.
- PMID 16723392.
- ^ a b "Anthracotheriidae (Family)". Archived from the original on 2009-03-19. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
- ^ [], Chaire de Paléoanthropologie et de Préhistoire, Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France Copyright 2007 The Palaeontological Association
- ^ Allaby, Michael (1999). "Anthracotheriidae". A Dictionary of Zoology. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 15 Apr 2009.
- ISBN 978-1-84028-152-1.
- PMID 15677331.
- ^ Michael Allaby. "Anthracotheriidae." A Dictionary of Zoology. 1999. Encyclopedia.com. 15 Apr. 2009 <[1].
- ; Received 26 June 2007; Accepted 3 October 2007
- ISSN 0213-6937.
- PMID 9159931.
- PMID 9881471.
- S2CID 4416444. Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2009.
- PMID 19774069.