Ptilocercus
Genus of mammals
Ptilocercus is a genus of treeshrew and the sole member of the family Ptilocercidae.
01Taxonomy
Today the genus (and family) is represented by a single species, the pen-tailed treeshrew (Ptilocercus lowii). However, this genus is very ancient and considered the most primitive of all the treeshrews. In 2016 a new species was described from China dated to the Early Oligocene about 34 million years ago. This species, Ptilocercus kylin, is so strikingly similar to the living species that it can be considered a sister taxa. This suggests that the Ptilocercidae have evolved little change over millions of years.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ptilocercus”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ptilocercus lowii.jpg by Joseph Wolf (1820, 1899), Public domain
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