''Plesiogulo'' is a genus of prehistoric
carnivore
A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other ...
that lived from
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" ...
to
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58[Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...](_blank)
,
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...
and
North America. An ancestral relationship to the
wolverine
The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for " glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a musc ...
(''Gulo gulo'') was once suggested, but it is no longer considered likely.
However, some authorities still consider it a member of the
Guloninae
Guloninae is a subfamily of the mammal family Mustelidae distributed across Eurasia and the Americas. It includes martens and the fisher, tayra and wolverine. These genera were formerly included within a paraphyletic definition of the musteli ...
.
Species
The following species have been currently described for this genus:
* †''
P. brachygnathus''
(Schlosser, 1903)
* †''
P. botori''
Haile-Selassie, Hlusko & Howell, 2004
* †''
P. crassa''
Teilhard de Chardin, 1945
* †''
P. marshalli''
(Martin, 1928)
* †
''P.'' ''lindsayi'' Harrison, 1981
* †''
P. monspessulanus''
Viret, 1939
* †''
P. praecocidens''
Kurtén, 1970
References
External links
What Exactly Is A Marten?The Palaeobiology Database
Guloninae
Pliocene carnivorans
Prehistoric mustelids
Prehistoric carnivoran genera
{{Paleo-carnivora-stub