Hahnodontidae is a family of
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 ...
mammaliaforms from Early
Cretaceous deposits in Morocco and the
Western United States. Although originally considered to belong to the extinct
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
Multituberculata, recent work indicates that hahnodontids belong to the more primitive clade
Haramiyida
Haramiyida ("thief" from Arabic الحرامية (al ḥarāmiyah), "thief, bandit") is a possibly polyphyletic order of mammaliaform cynodonts or mammals of controversial taxonomic affinites. Their teeth, which are by far the most common remains ...
.
Distribution
The
genera
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...
''Hahnodon'' and ''Denisodon'' occur in the Early Cretaceous of Morocco, while the genus ''Cifelliodon'' is found in the Barremian-age Yellow Cat Member of the
Cedar Mountain Formation in Utah.
[G. Hahn and R. Hahn. 2003. New multituberculate teeth from the Early Cretaceous of Morocco. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48(3):349-356.][Adam K. Huttenlocker; David M. Grossnickle; James I. Kirkland; Julia A. Schultz; Zhe-Xi Luo (2018). "Late-surviving stem mammal links the lowermost Cretaceous of North America and Gondwana". Nature. in press. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0126-y.]
Phylogeny
Sigogneau-Russell (1991) and Hahn & Hahn (2003) classified hahnodontids as
multituberculates, but the cladistic analysis of ''Cifelliodon'' recovered them outside Multituberculata as phylogenetically intermediate between
Docodonta
Docodonta is an Order (biology), order of extinct Mammaliaformes, mammaliaforms that lived during the Mesozoic, from the Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. They are distinguished from other early Mammaliaformes, mammaliaforms by their relativel ...
and crown Mammalia. The
gondwanathere ''
Vintana'' was also recovered as sister to members of Hahnodontidae.
[
]
References
* Sigogneau-Russell (1991), "First evidence of Multituberculata (Mammalia) in the Mesozoic of Africa". Neues Jahrb Geol Paläontol, Monatshefte, p. 119-125.
* 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: Basal Multituberculata, an Internet directory.
{{Taxonbar, from=Q3782409
Haramiyida
Prehistoric therapsid families
Taxa named by Denise Sigogneau‐Russell