Teilhardina

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Teilhardina[1][2]
Fossil range: Early Eocene
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorrhini
Family: Omomyidae
Genus: Teilhardina
Simpson, 1940
Species
  • Teilhardina crassidens
  • Teilhardina belgica
  • Teilhardina americana
  • Teilhardina brandti
  • Teilhardina demissa
  • Teilhardina tenuicula
  • Teilhardina asiatica
  • Teilhardina magnoliana

Teilhardina was an early marmoset-like primate that lived in Europe, North America and Asia during in the Early Eocene epoch, about 56-47 million years ago.[3][1] The paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson is credited with naming it after Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. It is known from quite a few species:

  • Teilhardina crassidens
  • Teilhardina belgica
  • Teilhardina americana
  • Teilhardina brandti
  • Teilhardina demissa
  • Teilhardina tenuicula
  • Teilhardina asiatica
  • Teilhardina magnoliana

The placement of this genus is uncertain and it is likely to be polyphyletic.[4] Two species (T. belgica and T. asiatica) appear to be haplorrhine, but equally ancestral to both modern tarsiers and simians, and the genus should be reserved for those two species only.[4] The others appear to be anaptomorphine omomyids (and thus more closely related to the tarsiers than to simians) and should have a new genus erected.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Beard, K.C. (2008). "The oldest North American primate and mammalian biogeography during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (10): 3815. doi:10.1073/pnas.0710180105. 
  2. ^ Tornow, M.A. (2008). "Systematic analysis of the Eocene primate family Omomyidae using gnathic and postcranial data". Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 49 (1): 43-129. 
  3. ^ Smith, T.; Rose, K.D.; Gingerich, P.D. (2006). "Rapid Asia-Europe-North America geographic dispersal of earliest Eocene primate Teilhardina during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (30): 11223. doi:10.1073/pnas.0511296103. 
  4. ^ a b Primates
  5. ^ Omomyidae: Anaptomorphinae
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