''Pappotherium'' is an extinct genus of mammals from the
Albian
The Albian is both an age (geology), age of the geologic timescale and a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early/Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch/s ...
(
early Cretaceous
The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 143.1 ...
) of Texas, US, known from a fossilized
maxilla
In vertebrates, the maxilla (: maxillae ) is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxil ...
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' ]cusp
A cusp is the most pointed end of a curve. It often refers to cusp (anatomy), a pointed structure on a tooth.
Cusp or CUSP may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Cusp (singularity), a singular point of a curve
* Cusp catastrophe, a branch of bifu ...
s, 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
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...
.
Slaughter argued that ''Pappotherium'' should have been a basal form close to the 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-eutheria
Eutheria (from Greek , 'good, right' and , 'beast'; ), also called Pan-Placentalia, is the clade consisting of Placentalia, placental mammals and all therian mammals that are more closely related to placentals than to marsupials.
Eutherians ...
n divergence point; this mammal likely was an arboreal
Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some animals may scale trees only occasionally (scansorial), but others are exclusively arboreal. The hab ...
insectivore
file:Common brown robberfly with prey.jpg, A Asilidae, robber fly eating a hoverfly
An insectivore is a carnivore, carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the Entomophagy ...
.[
Etymologically speaking, the name ''Pappotherium'' is a compound of the Latin words ''pappus'' (from ]ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), 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.
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
Early Cretaceous mammals of North America
Monotypic prehistoric mammal genera
Fossil taxa described in 1965
Wise County, Texas
Prehistoric metatherians