Primatomorpha is a proposed

mirorder Order () is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized ...

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

s containing the orders

Dermoptera Colugos (), flying lemurs, or cobegos (), are arboreal gliding euarchontogliran mammals that are native to Southeast Asia. Their closest evolutionary relatives are primates. There are just two living species of colugos: the Sunda flying lemur ...

(or colugos) and

Primates Primates is an order of mammals, which is further divided into the strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and lorisids; and the haplorhines, which include tarsiers and simians ( monkeys and apes). Primates arose 74–63 ...

. Primatomorpha is sister to Scandentia, together forming the

Euarchonta The Euarchonta are a proposed grandorder of mammals: the order Scandentia (treeshrews), and its sister Primatomorpha mirorder, containing the Dermoptera (colugos) and the primates (Plesiadapiformes and descendants). The term "Euarchonta" (mea ...

. The term "Primatomorpha" first appeared in the general scientific literature in 1991 (K.C. Beard) and 1992 (Kalandadze, Rautian). Major DNA sequence analyses of predominantly nuclear sequences (Murphy et al., 2001) support the

hypothesis, while a major study investigating mitochondrial sequences supports a different tree topology (Arnason et al., 2002). A study investigating

retrotransposon Retrotransposons (also called Class I transposable elements) are mobile elements which move in the host genome by converting their transcribed RNA into DNA through reverse transcription. Thus, they differ from Class II transposable elements, or ...

presence/absence data has claimed strong support for Euarchonta (Kriegs et al., 2007). Some interpretations of the molecular data link

and

in a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

(

) known as Primatomorpha, which is the sister of Scandentia. Primates probably split from the Dermoptera sister group 79.6 million years ago during the Cretaceous. Other interpretations link the Dermoptera and Scandentia together in a group called Sundatheria as the sister group of the primates. Some recent studies place Scandentia as sister of the Glires, invalidating Euarchonta.

Taxonomy

References

Further reading