Superfamily of carnivoran mammals
Musteloidea is a superfamily of carnivoran mammals united by shared characteristics of the skull and teeth. Musteloids are the sister group of pinnipeds, the group which includes seals.[1]
Musteloidea comprises the following families:
- Mustelidae, the weasel (mustelid) family, including new- and old-world badgers, ferrets and polecats, fishers, grisons and ratels, martens and sables, minks, river and sea otters, stoats and ermines, tayras and wolverines.
In North America, ursids (bears) and musteloids first appeared in the Chadronian[citation needed] of the late Eocene, and in early-Oligocene Europe, immediately following the Grande Coupure extinction event.
The following cladogram is based on molecular phylogeny of six genes in Flynn (2005),[2] with the musteloids updated following the multigene analysis of Law et al. (2018).[3]
References
- ^ Welsey-Hunt, G.D. & Flynn, J.J. (2005). "Phylogeny of the Carnivora: basal relationships among the Carnivoramorphans, and assessment of the position of 'Miacoidea' relative to Carnivora". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 3 (1): 1–28. Bibcode:2005JSPal...3....1W. doi:10.1017/S1477201904001518.
- ^ Flynn, J. J.; Finarelli, J. A.; Zehr, S.; Hsu, J.; Nedbal, M. A. (2005). "Molecular phylogeny of the Carnivora (Mammalia): Assessing the impact of increased sampling on resolving enigmatic relationships". Systematic Biology. 54 (2): 317–37. doi:10.1080/10635150590923326. PMID 16012099.
- ^ Law, Chris J.; Slater, Graham J.; Mehta, Rita S. (2018-01-01). "Lineage Diversity and Size Disparity in Musteloidea: Testing Patterns of Adaptive Radiation Using Molecular and Fossil-Based Methods". Systematic Biology. 67 (1): 127–144. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syx047. ISSN 1063-5157. PMID 28472434.
