''Scaglia'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

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 ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

n astrapotherid land

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 ...

that lived during the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

(

Casamayoran The Casamayoran () age is a period of geologic time (50.0–48.0 Ma) within the Early Eocene epoch of the Paleogene, used more specifically within the South American land mammal age (SALMA) classification. It follows the Itaboraian and precedes th ...

Divisaderan The Divisaderan age is a South American land mammal age, covering a period of geologic time (42.0–36.0 Mya (unit), Ma) within the Middle Eocene, Middle and Late Eocene epochs of the Paleogene. It follows the Mustersan age and is followed by the T ...

in the SALMA classification). The genus is

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 ...

, with its only known species (and thus its

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

) being ''Scaglia kraglievichorum''.

Etymology

The genus was named after Argentinian naturalist Galileo Juan Scaglia (1915–1989), and the type species after Argentinian palaeontologist Lucas Kraglievich (1886–1932).

Description

Its type specimen, recovered from the

Sarmiento Formation The Sarmiento Formation (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Formación Sarmiento''), in older literature described as the Casamayor Formation, is a geological formation in Chubut Province, Argentina, in central Patagonia, which spans around 30 million y ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

, is MMCNT-MdP 207. Like '' Albertogaudrya'', ''Scaglia'' was the size of a sheep or a small tapir, hence among the larger mammals in South America at that time.

Phylogeny

Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

according to Bond ''et'' al., 2011, standing out the phylogenetic position of ''Scaglia'':

References

Bibliography

* *

Etymology

Description

Phylogeny

References

Bibliography

Further reading