''Hondadelphys'' is an extinct genus of carnivorous
sparassodont
Sparassodonta (from Greek to tear, rend; and , gen. , ' tooth) is an extinct order of carnivorous metatherian mammals native to South America, related to modern marsupials. They were once considered to be true marsupials, but are now thoug ...
s, known from the Middle Miocene of Colombia. The
type species
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...
, ''H. fieldsi'', was described in 1976 from the fossil locality of
La Venta
La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Some of the artifacts have been moved to the museum "Parque - Museo de La Venta", which is in nearby Villahermosa, ...
, which hosts fossils from the
Villavieja Formation
The Honda Group ( es, Grupo Honda, Tsh, Ngh) is a geological group of the Upper and Middle Magdalena Basins and the adjacent Central and Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. The group, in older literature also defined as formation, is in it ...
.
''Hondadelphys ''was originally interpreted as belonging to the opossum family
Didelphidae, but subsequently assigned to its own family, Hondadelphidae and interpreted as a basal sparassodont.
The genus name refers to the
Honda Group, the
stratigraphic group
In geology, a group is a lithostratigraphic unit consisting of a series of related formations that have been classified together to form a group. Formations are the fundamental unit of stratigraphy. Groups may sometimes be combined into super ...
in which the fossils of this animal were first found, combined with ''delphys ''(Greek for "womb", a common suffix used for
opossum
Opossums () are members of the marsupial order Didelphimorphia () endemic to the Americas. The largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, it comprises 93 species in 18 genera. Opossums originated in South America and entered North ...
-like
metatherian
Metatheria is a mammalian clade that includes all mammals more closely related to marsupials than to placentals. First proposed by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1880, it is a more inclusive group than the marsupials; it contains all marsupials as well ...
s).
[
]
References
Sparassodonts
Miocene mammals of South America
Laventan
Neogene Colombia
Fossils of Colombia
Fossil taxa described in 1976
Prehistoric mammal genera
{{paleo-mammal-stub