''Pucadelphys'' is an extinct
genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...
of non-
marsupial
Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of marsupials' unique features is their reproductive strategy: the young are born in a r ...
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 in
Tiupampa in
Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
.
[''Pucadelphys'']
at Fossilworks
Fossilworks was a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database, a large relational database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists from around the world.
History
Fossilworks was cr ...
.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 and other South American taxa, but not
marsupials (which are instead closer to
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...
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
Paleocene Bolivia
Fossils of Bolivia
Santa Lucía Formation
Fossil taxa described in 1988
Monotypic prehistoric mammal genera
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