Albionbaataridae is a family of small,

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

mammals within the order

Multituberculata Multituberculata (commonly known as multituberculates, named for the multiple tubercles of their teeth) is an extinct order of rodent-like mammals with a fossil record spanning over 130 million years. They first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, a ...

Fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

remains are known from the Upper

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

and Lower

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

of Europe and Asia. These

herbivore A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...

s lived their obscure lives during the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

, also known as the "age of the

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

s." They were among the more derived representatives of the informal suborder "

Plagiaulacida Plagiaulacida is a group of extinct multituberculate mammals. Multituberculates were among the most common mammals of the Mesozoic, "the age of the dinosaurs". Plagiaulacids are a paraphyletic grouping, containing all multituberculates that lie o ...

". The taxon Albionbaataridae was named by Kielan-Jaworowska Z. and Ensom P.C. in 1994. Members of Albionbaataridae were "Shrew-sized taxa that differ from all other multituberculates in having relatively flat, multi-cusped anterior upper premolars, with 10-14 cusps arranged in three rows, rather than 3-4, rarely up to nine high cusps in two rows, and in having lingual slope of all premolars covered by prominent, subparallel ridges...," (Kielan-Jaworowska & Hurum, 2001, p. 414).

References

* Kielan-Jaworowska & Ensom (1994), ''Tiny plagiaulacoid multituberculate mammals from the Purbeck Limestone Formation of Dorset England''. Paleontology, 37, p. 17-31. * Kielan-Jaworowska Z & Hurum JH (2001), ''Phylogeny and Systematics of multituberculate mammals''. Paleontology 44, p. 389-429. * Much of this information has been derived fro

MESOZOIC MAMMALS; Plagiaulacidae, Albionbaataridae, Eobaataridae & Arginbaataridae, an Internet directory. Multituberculates Late Jurassic first appearances Early Cretaceous extinctions Prehistoric mammal families {{cretaceous-mammal-stub