21-580: See text. Eutheria (from Greek εὐ- , eú- 'good, right' and θηρίον , thēríon 'beast'; lit. ' true beasts ' ), also called Pan-Placentalia , is the clade consisting of placental mammals and all therian mammals that are more closely related to placentals than to marsupials. Eutherians are distinguished from noneutherians by various phenotypic traits of the feet, ankles, jaws and teeth. All extant eutherians lack epipubic bones , which are present in all other living mammals (marsupials and monotremes ). This allows for expansion of
42-588: A population , or a species ( extinct or extant ). Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently. Clades are termed monophyletic (Greek: "one clan") groups. Over the last few decades, the cladistic approach has revolutionized biological classification and revealed surprising evolutionary relationships among organisms. Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades; that is, taxa that are not monophyletic . Some of
63-479: A "ladder", with supposedly more "advanced" organisms at the top. Taxonomists have increasingly worked to make the taxonomic system reflect evolution. When it comes to naming , this principle is not always compatible with the traditional rank-based nomenclature (in which only taxa associated with a rank can be named) because not enough ranks exist to name a long series of nested clades. For these and other reasons, phylogenetic nomenclature has been developed; it
84-669: A basal eutherian clade as sister to the Atlantogenata. Xenarthra Afrotheria Laurasiatheria Euarchontoglires Phylogeny after Wang & Wang, 2023. Metatheria † Sinodelphys † Ambolestes † Acristatherium † Microtherulum † Cokotherium † Juramaia † Eomaia † Prokennalestes † Murtoilestes † Montanalestes † Daulestes † Ukhaatherium † Asioryctes † Kennalestes † Gypsonictops † Cimolestes † Zalambdalestes † Aspanlestes † Protungulatum † Eoungulatum † Leptictis Placentalia Below
105-446: A branch of mammals that split off after the end of the period when the clade Dinosauria stopped being the dominant terrestrial vertebrates 66 million years ago. The original population and all its descendants are a clade. The rodent clade corresponds to the order Rodentia, and insects to the class Insecta. These clades include smaller clades, such as chipmunk or ant , each of which consists of even smaller clades. The clade "rodent"
126-623: A clade can be described based on two different reference points, crown age and stem age. The crown age of a clade refers to the age of the most recent common ancestor of all of the species in the clade. The stem age of a clade refers to the time that the ancestral lineage of the clade diverged from its sister clade. A clade's stem age is either the same as or older than its crown age. Ages of clades cannot be directly observed. They are inferred, either from stratigraphy of fossils , or from molecular clock estimates. Viruses , and particularly RNA viruses form clades. These are useful in tracking
147-422: A revised taxonomy based on a concept strongly resembling clades, although the term clade itself would not be coined until 1957 by his grandson, Julian Huxley . German biologist Emil Hans Willi Hennig (1913–1976) is considered to be the founder of cladistics . He proposed a classification system that represented repeated branchings of the family tree, as opposed to the previous systems, which put organisms on
168-429: A suffix added should be e.g. "dracohortian". A clade is by definition monophyletic , meaning that it contains one ancestor which can be an organism, a population, or a species and all its descendants. The ancestor can be known or unknown; any and all members of a clade can be extant or extinct. The science that tries to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and thus discover clades is called phylogenetics or cladistics ,
189-546: Is a grouping of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree . In the taxonomical literature, sometimes the Latin form cladus (plural cladi ) is used rather than the English form. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics , a modern approach to taxonomy adopted by most biological fields. The common ancestor may be an individual,
210-433: Is a phylogeny from Gheerbrant & Teodori (2021): Eomaia Prokennalestes Murtoilestes Bobolestes Montanalestes Paranyctoides Sheikhdheilia Lainodon Alostera Eozhelestes Avitotherium Clade In biological phylogenetics , a clade (from Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) 'branch'), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group ,
231-476: Is in turn included in the mammal, vertebrate and animal clades. The idea of a clade did not exist in pre- Darwinian Linnaean taxonomy , which was based by necessity only on internal or external morphological similarities between organisms. Many of the better known animal groups in Linnaeus's original Systema Naturae (mostly vertebrate groups) do represent clades. The phenomenon of convergent evolution
SECTION 10
#1732772548549252-515: Is responsible for many cases of misleading similarities in the morphology of groups that evolved from different lineages. With the increasing realization in the first half of the 19th century that species had changed and split through the ages, classification increasingly came to be seen as branches on the evolutionary tree of life . The publication of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859 gave this view increasing weight. In 1876 Thomas Henry Huxley , an early advocate of evolutionary theory, proposed
273-489: Is still controversial. As an example, see the full current classification of Anas platyrhynchos (the mallard duck) with 40 clades from Eukaryota down by following this Wikispecies link and clicking on "Expand". The name of a clade is conventionally a plural, where the singular refers to each member individually. A unique exception is the reptile clade Dracohors , which was made by haplology from Latin "draco" and "cohors", i.e. "the dragon cohort "; its form with
294-545: The Berriasian age (~145-140 million years ago) of the Early Cretaceous in southern England have also been suggested to represent early eutherians. Another possible eutherian species Juramaia sinensis has been dated at 161 million years ago from the early Late Jurassic ( Oxfordian ) of China. However some authors have considered Juramaia as a stem therian instead, and some sources have doubted
315-540: The abdomen during pregnancy, though epipubic bones are present in many primitive eutherians. Eutheria was named in 1872 by Theodore Gill ; in 1880, Thomas Henry Huxley defined it to encompass a more broadly defined group than Placentalia. The earliest unambiguous eutherians are known from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China, dating around 120 million years ago. Two tribosphenic mammals, Durlstodon and Durlstotherium from
336-731: The dating of the specimen. Distinguishing features are: Eutheria (i.e. Placentalia sensu lato , Pan-Placentalia): Notes: Eutheria contains several extinct genera as well as larger groups, many with complicated taxonomic histories still not fully understood. Members of the Adapisoriculidae , Cimolesta and Leptictida have been previously placed within the outdated placental group Insectivora , while zhelestids have been considered primitive ungulates . However, more recent studies have suggested these enigmatic taxa represent stem group eutherians, more basal to Placentalia. The weakly favoured cladogram favours Boreoeutheria as
357-518: The latter term coined by Ernst Mayr (1965), derived from "clade". The results of phylogenetic/cladistic analyses are tree-shaped diagrams called cladograms ; they, and all their branches, are phylogenetic hypotheses. Three methods of defining clades are featured in phylogenetic nomenclature : node-, stem-, and apomorphy-based (see Phylogenetic nomenclature§Phylogenetic definitions of clade names for detailed definitions). The relationship between clades can be described in several ways: The age of
378-482: The relationships between organisms that the molecular biology arm of cladistics has revealed include that fungi are closer relatives to animals than they are to plants, archaea are now considered different from bacteria , and multicellular organisms may have evolved from archaea. The term "clade" is also used with a similar meaning in other fields besides biology, such as historical linguistics ; see Cladistics § In disciplines other than biology . The term "clade"
399-636: The spread of viral infections . HIV , for example, has clades called subtypes, which vary in geographical prevalence. HIV subtype (clade) B, for example is predominant in Europe, the Americas and Japan, whereas subtype A is more common in east Africa. Leptictis Leptictis is an extinct genus of leptictid non- placental eutherian mammal known from the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene of North America. The type species, L. haydeni ,
420-423: Was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley to refer to the result of cladogenesis , the evolutionary splitting of a parent species into two distinct species, a concept Huxley borrowed from Bernhard Rensch . Many commonly named groups – rodents and insects , for example – are clades because, in each case, the group consists of a common ancestor with all its descendant branches. Rodents, for example, are
441-400: Was named in 1868 by Joseph Leidy in honour of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden . L. dakotensis was also named by Leidy in 1868, but he originally named it as a separate genus, Ictops , which is now seen as the same animal as Lepticitis . Since then, six other species have been named. The hind limbs are proportionally elongated compared to their forelimbs similar to elephant shrews , though to
SECTION 20
#1732772548549#548451