Miacoidea

Miacoidea
Temporal range: 66.0–33.9 Ma early Paleocene to late Eocene
skull of Miacis parvivorus
skull of Viverravus minutus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Clade: Carnivoramorpha
Superfamily: †Miacoidea
Cope, 1880[1]
Families

Miacoidea ("small points") is a former paraphyletic superfamily of extinct placental mammals that lived during the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, about 66-33,9 million years ago.[2][3][4][5][6][7] This group had been traditionally divided into two families of primitive carnivorous mammals: Miacidae (the miacids) and Viverravidae (the viverravids). These mammals were basal to order Carnivora, the crown-group within the Carnivoramorpha.

  1. ^ E. D. Cope (1880.) "On the genera of the Creodonta." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 19:76-82
  2. ^ J. J. Hooker (1986.) "Mammals from the Bartonian (middle/late Eocene) of the Hampshire Basin, southern England." Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) 39(4):191-478
  3. ^ Robert L. Carroll (1988.) "Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution." W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, Miacoidea
  4. ^ McKenna, Malcolm C.; Bell, Susan K. (1997). Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-11012-9. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
  5. ^ J. J. Flynn (1998.) "Early Cenozoic Carnivora ("Miacoidea")." In C. M. Janis, K. M. Scott and L. L. Jacobs (eds.) "Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America. Volume 1: Terrestrial Carnivores, Ungulates, and Ungulatelike Mammals." Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9780521355193
  6. ^ T. J. Meehan and R. W. Wilson (2002) "New viverravids from the Torrejonian (Middle Paleocene) of Kutz Canyon, New Mexico and the oldest skull of the order Carnivora." Journal of Paleontology 76(6):1091-1101
  7. ^ K. D. Rose, A. E. Chew, R. H. Dunn, M. J. Kraus, H. C. Fricke and S. P. Zack (2012) "Earliest Eocene mammalian fauna from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum at Sand Creek Divide, southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming." University of Michigan Papers on Paleontology 36:1-122