| Cimolesta Temporal range: Late Cretaceous–Oligocene |
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|---|---|
| Palaeospinopa from Wyoming eocene | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Eutheria |
| Superorder: | Laurasiatheria |
| Order: | †Cimolesta McKenna, 1975 |
| Clades | |
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Cimolesta (from Greek, literally, "White Clay Thieves") is an extinct order of mammals. A few experts place the pangolins within Cimolesta, though most other experts prefer to place the pangolins within their own order, Pholidota.
Some experts place the enigmatic family Ptolemaiidae within Cimolesta, also due to similarities between dental and skull anatomies with those of Pantolesta. If the ptolemaiids were indeed cimolestids, then the range of Cimolesta would have ranged from the Late Cretaceous to the early Miocene, when the last ptolemaiid, Kelba, disappeared in Eastern Africa.
It is part of the cohort Ferae, and is possibly a sister taxon to the Perissodactyla. The Cimolesta contains several groups that are very different from each other, and are sometimes regarded as separate orders (which makes the Cimolesta a group between that of order and superorder): the herbivorous (and sometimes hooved) Pantodonta, the insectivorous Didelphodonta (which contains the well-known genus Cimolestes, a possible ancestor of the Carnivora) the rodent-like Tillodonta, the possibly carnivorous and/or omnivorous Pantolesta, the Taeniodonta and the Apatotheria.
Several groups are believed to have descended from the Cimolesta: the Pholidota (which could be regarded a suborder of Cimolesta), the Creodonta, and the Carnivora. The origins of the enigmatic Dinocerata may lie within the Cimolesta as well. If so, it would make Cimolesta a paraphyletic group rather than a clade, representing a basal group within the Laurasiatherians. Cimolestans had a wide variety of body shapes, dentition and livestyles, though the majority of them were small to medium sized general mammals that bore superficial resemblances to rodents, weasels or opossums.