Taeniolabidoidea

Taeniolabidoidea is a group of extinct mammals known from North America and Asia. They were the largest members of the extinct order Multituberculata, as well as the largest non-therian mammals. Lambdopsalis even provides direct fossil evidence of mammalian fur in a fairly good state of preservation for a 60-million-year-old animal. Some of these animals were large for their time; Taeniolabis taoensis is the largest known multituberculate and though smaller, Yubaatar is the largest known Mesozoic Asian multituberculate.[2] Average members of the Taeniolaboidea were about beaver-sized and the largest even reached sizes comparable to the largest beavers like Castoroides, up to about 100 kilograms.[1]

Taeniolabidoidea Temporal range: 66–56 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Late Cretaceous-Paleocene
Taeniolabis taoensis life reconstruction.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	†Multituberculata
Suborder:	†Cimolodonta
Superfamily:	†Taeniolabidoidea
Families & genera
Valenopsalis[1] Catopsalis paraphyletic[1] ?Bubodens[1] Yubaatar Taeniolabididae Taeniolabis Kimbetopsalis[1] Lambdopsalidae[1] Lambdopsalis Sphenopsalis Prionessus

The group was initially established as a suborder, before being assigned the rank of a superfamily by McKenna and Bell in 1997 (see Kielan-Jaworowska and Hurum (2001) p. 391-392). Two families are recognised: the primarily North American Taeniolabididae, composed of Taeniolabis and Kimbetopsalis, and the exclusively Asian Lambdopsalidae, composed of Lambdopsalis, Sphenopsalis and Prionessus, with Valenopsalis being a basal form outside of either clade.[1] Some of the fossils are well-preserved. Though the possible taeniolabidoid Bubodens is known from the Lancian Late Cretaceous deposits of South Dakota,[1] and Yubaatar is known from Late Cretaceous deposits in the Henan Province,[2] the clade is otherwise only clearly represented in Paleocene strata.[1]

Derived characteristics of the taxon (apomorphies) include: "snout short and wide with anterior part of zygomatic arches directed transversely, resulting in a square-like shape of the skull (shared with Kogaionidae); frontals small, pointed posteriorly, almost or completely excluded from the orbital rim," (Kielan-Jaworowska and Hurum 2001, p. 417).

References

1. Williamson, Thomas E.; Brusatte, Stephen L.; Secord, Ross; Shelley, Sarah (2015). "A new taeniolabidoid multituberculate (Mammalia) from the middle Puercan of the Nacimiento Formation, New Mexico, and a revision of taeniolabidoid systematics and phylogeny". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 177: 183–208. doi:10.1111/zoj.12336.
2. L. Xu, X. Zhang, H. Pu, S. Jia, and J. Zhang, J., and J. Meng. 2015. Largest known Mesozoic multituberculate from Eurasia and implications for multituberculate evolution and biology. Scientific Reports 5(14950):1-11

• Kielan-Jaworowska Z. and Hurum J.H., "Phylogeny and Systematics of multituberculate mammals". Paleontology 44, p. 389-429, 2001.
• McKenna M.C. and Bell S.K., (1997), Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level. Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Much of this information has been derived from MESOZOIC MAMMALS: Eucosmodontidae, Microcosmodontidae and Taeniolabidoidea, an Internet directory.