Atlantogenata

Atlantogenata
Temporal range: Paleocene - Recent
African bush elephant (Afrotheria)
Giant anteater (Xenarthra)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Eutheria
Magnorder: Atlantogenata
Superorders and Orders


See text for more details

The Atlantogenata are a proposed clade of mammals containing the cohorts or superorders Afrotheria and Xenarthra. These groups originated and radiated in the South American and African continents, presumably in the Cretaceous. Together with Boreoeutheria, they make up Eutheria. The monophyly of this grouping was supported by some genetic evidence.[1][2]

Alternative hypotheses are that Boreoeutheria and Afrotheria combine to form Epitheria (as generally supported by anatomical and other physiological evidence) or that Boreoeutheria and Xenarthra combine to form Exafroplacentalia or Notolegia.[3]

Updated analysis of transposable element insertions around the time of divergence strongly supports the fourth hypothesis of a near-concomitant origin (trifurcation) of the three superorders of mammals.[4][5]

Eutheria  

Boreoeutheria


  Atlantogenata  

Xenarthra



Afrotheria  




References

  1. Waddell, Peter J.; Okada, Norohiro; Hasegawa, Masami (1999). "Towards Resolving the Interordinal Relationships of Placental Mammals". Systematic Biology 48 (1): 1–5. doi:10.1093/sysbio/48.1.1. PMID 12078634.
  2. Murphy, W.J., Pringle, T.H., Crider, T.A., Springer, M.S. & Miller, W. 2007. Using genomic data to unravel the root of the placental mammal phylogeny. Genome Research 17: 413–421.
  3. Wildman, Derek E.; Chen, Caoyi; Erez, Offer; Grossman, Lawrence I.; Goodman, Morris; Romero, Roberto (2006). "Evolution of the mammalian placenta revealed by phylogenetic analysis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (9): 3203–3208. doi:10.1073/pnas.0511344103. PMC 1413940. PMID 16492730.
  4. Nishihara, H.; Maruyama, S.; Okada, N. (2009). "Retroposon analysis and recent geological data suggest near-simultaneous divergence of the three superorders of mammals". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (13): 5235. doi:10.1073/pnas.0809297106.
  5. Churakov, G.; Kriegs, J. O.; Baertsch, R.; Zemann, A.; Brosius, J. R.; Schmitz, J. R. (2009). "Mosaic retroposon insertion patterns in placental mammals". Genome Research 19 (5): 868–875. doi:10.1101/gr.090647.108. PMC 2675975. PMID 19261842.

Further reading