''Pucadelphys'' is an extinct
genus
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 nom ...
of non-
marsupial
Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...
metatheria
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 wel ...
n. The genus contains a single species, ''P. andinus''. Fossils of ''Pucadelphys'' have been found in the
Santa Lucía Formation
The Santa Lucía Formation is a Maastrichtian to Paleocene (Danian) geologic formation in Bolivia. Fossil ornithopod tracks have been reported from the Cretaceous lower part of the formation.Weishampel, et al., 2004, pp.517-607 It is the type fo ...
in
Tiupampa in
Bolivia.
[''Pucadelphys'']
at Fossilworks.org
Description
''Pucadelphys'' was small and likely to have eaten insects. It had a long tail, although incomplete on the best preserved fossils. It is possible that the tail was longer than (or at least as long as) its body. 17 vertebrae were preserved, and its estimated that there was 5 to 10 additional vertebrae originally. It is regarded as partially arboreal, and partially terrestrial. It may have been social, as more than 30 specimens have been found together.
Taxonomy
A 2016 phylogenetic analysis recovered ''Pucadelphys'' as a member of a metatherian clade including
sparassodonts
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 though ...
and other South American taxa, but not
marsupials (which are instead closer to
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
North American species). The phylogenetic tree from the analysis is shown below.
References
Further reading
* Brands, S.J. (comp.) 1989–2005
Systema Naturae 2000. The Taxonomicon Universal Taxonomic Services, Amsterdam, Holanda.
* McKenna, M.C., y Bell, S.K. (1997), Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level., Columbia University Press, New York. 0-231-11013-8.
* Suárez Soruco, R. (2007) ''Bolivia y su Paleodiversidad'' Cuadernos del Museo Geominero, nº 8. Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid.
Prehistoric metatherians
Paleocene mammals of South America
Tiupampan
Paleogene Bolivia
Fossils of Bolivia
Santa Lucía Formation
Fossil taxa described in 1988
Prehistoric mammal genera
{{paleo-mammal-stub