''Pappotherium'' is an extinct genus of mammals from the Albian (

early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Pro ...

) of Texas, US, known from a fossilized maxilla fragment bearing two tribosphenic molars, discovered within the Glen Rose Formation near Decatur, Wise County, Texas. The fossil was discovered by Bob H. Slaughter within some deposits dating back to 112.6 – 109 million years ago. On the basis of the morphology of the molars' cusps, in 1965 Slaughter established the new genus ''Pappotherium'' and the new species ''P. pattersoni''; he also created an apposite family, Pappotheriidae. Both this family and the genus are nowadays still monotypic. Slaughter argued that ''Pappotherium'' should have been a basal form close to the metatherian- eutherian divergence point; this mammal likely was an arboreal

insectivore A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores wer ...

. Etymologically speaking, the name ''Pappotherium'' is a compound of the Latin words ''pappus'' (from ancient Greek πάππος, ''páppos'', “grandfather”) and ''therium'' (from ancient Greek θηρίον, ''thēríon'', “beast”, a common suffix among extinct mammals), with the full meaning of “mammal-grandfather”. The second part of the unique species' name, ''pattersoni'', was instead chosen in honor of the American paleontologist

Bryan Patterson Bryan Patterson (born 10 March 1909 in London; died 1 December 1979 in Chicago) was an American paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Life and career Bryan Patterson was the son of the soldier, engineer and author ...

. More recently, it has been recovered as a possible deltatheroidean.S. Bi, X. Jin, S. Li and T. Du. 2015. A new Cretaceous metatherian mammal from Henan, China. PeerJ 3:e896 The most recent phylogeny including ''Pappotherium'' is reproduced below.

References

Bibliography

*Slaughter, B. H. 1965, "A therian from the lower Cretaceous (Albian) of Texas", ''Postilla'' 93, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, pp. 1–18. *Davis, B. M. & Cifelli, R. L. 2011, "Reappraisal of the tribosphenidan mammals from the Trinity Group (Aptian–Albian) of Texas and Oklahoma", ''Acta Palaeontologica Polonica'' 56 (3), pp. 441–62. {{Taxonbar, from=Q18158210 Cretaceous mammals Cretaceous mammals of North America Prehistoric monotypic mammal genera Fossil taxa described in 1965 Wise County, Texas Prehistoric metatherians Prehistoric mammal genera