Tylopoda (meaning "swollen foot") is a suborder of terrestrial herbivorous even-toed ungulates belonging to Artiodactyla. It is extant in the wild only in South America and Asia (feral camels are also present in Australia); the group has a long fossil history in North America and Europe. Tylopoda appeared during the Eocene around 46.2 mya—present, existing for approximately 46.2 million years.[1]
Tylopoda has seven families of which only one, Camelidae, is extant. In the past, this group was much more diverse, containing the families Xiphodontidae, Oromerycidae, Protoceratidae, Cainotheriidae, and the two families of oreodonts, Agriochoeridae and Merycoidodontidae. However, now it contains only the camels, llamas, guanacos, alpacas and vicuñas.
[edit] Taxonomy
Tylopoda was named by Illiger (1811). It is extant. It was considered monophyletic by Matthew (1908). It was reranked as the unranked clade Tylopoda by Matthew (1908); it was reranked as the suborder Tylopoda by Carroll (1988), Ursing et al. (2000) and Whistler and Webb (2005). It was assigned to Ruminantia by Matthew (1908); to Artiodactyla by Flower (1883) and Carroll (1988); to Neoselenodontia by Whistler and Webb (2005); and to Cetartiodactyla by Ursing et al. (2000) and Agnarsson and May-Collado (2008).[2][3][4]
[edit] References
- ^ PaleoBiology Database: Priscocamelus, basic info
- ^ W. D. Matthew. 1908. Osteology of Blastomeryx and phylogeny of the American Cervidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 24(27):535-562
- ^ R. L. Carroll. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York 1-698
- ^ B. M. Ursing, K. E. Slack, and U. Arnason. 2000. Subordinal artiodactyl relationships in light of phylogenetic analysis of 12 mitochondrial protein-coding genes. Zoologica Scripta 29:83-88
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