''Lamegoia'' is an

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 ...

genus of

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s, belonging to the family Didolodontidae. It contains a single species, ''Lamegoia conodonta'', which lived during the Late Paleocene in what is now South America.

Description

This animal is only known from a few fossil teeth, and reconstructing its appearance is therefore impossible. From comparison with some of his relatives, it is assumed it may have been 75 centimeters long. ''Lamegoia'' was characterized by bunodont teeth, quite similar to ''

Didolodus ''Didolodus'' is an extinct genus of mammals from Middle Eocene Argentina. It is an ungulate mammal of uncertain affinities, possibly related to Litopterna, though this is uncertain due to the lack of reliable post-cranial remains, and for now r ...

'' but more archaic ; the lower molars possessed a complete trigonid.

Classification

''Lamegoia'' is a member of the Didolodontidae, a badly known clade of south-american mammals from the early

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

. ''Lamegoia conodonta'' was described in 1952 by

Carlos de Paula Couto Carlos de Paula Couto, (Porto Alegre, August 30, 1910 – November 15, 1982) was a Brazilian paleontologist. Biography Paula Couto was a researcher at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, specialized in paleontology of mammals. ...

, over fossilized teeth found near São José de Itaborai in Brazil.

Paleobiology

''Lamegoia'' possessed transversal and highly wavy

Hunter-Schreger band Hunter-Schreger bands, commonly abbreviated as HSB, are features of the enamel of the teeth in mammals, mostly placentals.Line and Bergqvist, 2005, p. 924 In HSB, enamel prisms are arranged in layers of varying thickness at about right angles ...

s (structures present on the teeth, used for strengthening the enamel ; other mammals of similar size from the Itaboraí Formation possessed vertical bands. It is supposed that this characteristic was a functional adaptation to a certain type of vegetation, that the bunodont dentition of ''Lamegoia'' was able to process.

References

*C. d. Paula Couto. 1952. Fossil mammals from the beginning of the Cenozoic in Brazil. Condylarthra, Litopterna, Xenungulata, and Astrapotheria. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 99(6):355-394 *R. Cifelli. 1983. The origin and affinities of the South American Condylarthra and early Tertiary Litopterna (Mammalia). American Museum Novitates 2772:1-49 *J. N. Gelfo. 2007. The ‘condylarth’ Raulvaccia peligrensis (Mammalia: Didolodontidae) from the Paleocene of Patagonia, Argentina. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(3):651-660 Didolodontids Condylarths Paleocene mammals of South America Paleogene Argentina Fossils of Brazil Fossil taxa described in 1952 Prehistoric placental genera Monotypic mammal genera Itaboraí Formation {{paleo-mammal-stub