Is Afrotheria Polyphyletic?

The order Lipotyphla has generally been viewed as a difficult group to classify. For example, recent morphologically based analyses only weakly support the lipotyphla while molecular evidence renders it polyphyletic, placing the golden moles and tenrecs in the superorder known as Afrotheria.

Is Afrotheria monophyletic?

Com- prehensive sequence data of DNA and amino acids, as well as chromosome painting analyses, suggest that they are monophyletic (Stanhope et al.

Is Afrotheria an order?

Therapsid
Afrotheria/Order

Which of the following orders belongs to the Afrotheria?

Afrotheria is a superorder (4) that contains six orders: the elephants (Order Proboscidea), sea cows (Sirenia), hyraxes (Hyracoidea), aardvark (Tubulidentata), elephant shrews (Macroscelidea), and golden moles and tenrecs (Afrosoricida) (Fig. 1).

Are Aardvarks and elephants related?

Although aardvarks look like anteaters, they are actually related to elephants, hyraxes, and dugongs and manatees; all belong to a group of primitive ungulates called uranotherians.

Where are proboscidea found?

North Africa
Approximately 165 fossil species of Proboscidea have been identified. The majority of early proboscidean fossils, 60–40 million years old, have been found in North Africa, and several of them appear to have been amphibious in habit.

What animal is closest to an elephant?

Hyraxes
Hyraxes are sometimes described as being the closest living relative of the elephant, although whether this is so is disputed. Recent morphological- and molecular-based classifications reveal the sirenians to be the closest living relatives of elephants.

What are the ancestors of elephants?

Its ancestors, the Palaeoloxodon recki, lived in Africa between 3.5 millon and 100 000 years ago. Fossils show that the straight-tusked elephants arrived in Eurasia around 750 000 years ago and that they left Africa through the Middle East.

What are the characteristics of proboscidea?

Pleistocene proboscideans in general have many of the traits we associate with elephants, such as a trunk (an elongated hose-like extension containing the nasal passages), tusks (the enlarged second upper incisors; in some extinct forms, the second lower incisors also formed tusks), and a relatively large size.

What was the largest proboscidea?

The largest-known land mammal ever was a proboscidean called Palaeoloxodon namadicus which weighed about 22 t (24.3 short tons) and measured about 5.2 m (17.1 ft) tall at the shoulder.

Why are dugongs like elephants?

Dugongs are more closely related to elephants than to other marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. They are sometimes referred to as ‘sea cows’ because they feed almost exclusively on sea grass.

What are the characteristics of a Greek hero?

In Professor Nagy’s list of the characteristics of the prototypical Greek hero, he writes that the hero was “un-seasonal”. This basically means that the greatest heroes were born into dire circumstances of some kind. Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules) – the greatest hero of all – is the poster boy for unseasonality.

Who are the members of the Afrotheria group?

Jump to navigation Jump to search. Afrotheria is a clade of mammals, the living members of which belong to groups that are either currently living in Africa or of African origin: golden moles, elephant shrews (also known as sengis), tenrecs, aardvarks, hyraxes, elephants, sea cows, and several extinct clades.

What kind of animals are part of Afrotheria?

The Afrotherians are often considered as basal clade in eutherian phylogeny and include elephants, sea cows, hyraxes tenrecs, golden moles, sengis, and aardvarks (McKechnie and Mzilikazi, 2011). Torpor use has been described in many tenrecs.

What makes a person a hero in ancient times?

Ancient literature called people with supernatural abilities heroes because they were born of a god and a human. Heroes had great strength, like Hercules, or protection from wounds, like Achilles. Scholars note that these ancient heroic stories featured men who wanted glory.

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