Euarchontoglires
Superorder of mammals
Euarchontoglires (from Euarchonta 'true rulers' + Glires 'dormice'), synonymous with Supraprimates, is a clade and a superorder of placental mammals, the living members of which belong to one of the five following groups: rodents, lagomorphs, treeshrews, primates, and colugos.
01Classification
External classification
The Euarchontoglires clade is based on DNA sequence analyses and retrotransposon markers that combine the clades Glires (Rodentia + Lagomorpha) and Euarchonta (Scandentia + Primates + Dermoptera). It is usually discussed without a taxonomic rank but has been called a cohort, magnorder, or superorder. Relations among the four cohorts (Euarchontoglires, Xenarthra, Laurasiatheria, Afrotheria) and the identity of the placental root remain controversial.
So far, few, if any, distinctive anatomical features have been recognized that support Euarchontoglires; nor does any strong evidence from anatomy support alternative hypotheses. Although both Euarchontoglires and diprotodont marsupials are documented to possess a vermiform appendix, this feature evolved as a result of convergent evolution.
Euarchontoglires probably split from the Boreoeutheria magnorder about 85 to 95 million years ago, during the Cretaceous, and developed in the Laurasian island group that would later become Europe. This hypothesis is supported by molecular evidence; so far, the earliest known fossils date to the early Paleocene. The combined clade of Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria is recognized as Boreoeutheria.
Internal Classification
The hypothesized relationship among the Euarchontoglires is as follows:
| Boreoeutheria |
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One study based on DNA analysis suggests that Scandentia and Primates are sister clades, but does not discuss the position of Dermoptera. Although it is known that Scandentia is one of the most basal Euarchontoglires clades, the exact phylogenetic position is not yet considered resolved, and it may be a sister of Glires, Primatomorpha or Dermoptera or to all other Euarchontoglires. Some old studies place Scandentia as sister of the Glires, invalidating Euarchonta.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Euarchontoglires”, 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:
- Euarchontoglires 1.jpg by User:蕭漫 (montage creator), CC BY-SA 4.0
- OrthoMaM v10b 2019 116genera circular tree.svg by This picture is a work by the OrthoMaM team at the "Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM)" and at the "University of Montpellier". Please credit this picture with one of these references. Original paper - OrthoMaM: A database of orthologous genomic markers for placental mammal phylogenetics. Ranwez V., Delsuc F., Ranwez S., Belkhir K., Tilak M. & Douzery E. J. P. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2007, 7 : 241. Database update - OrthoMaM v8: a database of orthologous exons and coding sequences for comparative genomics in mammals. Douzery E. J. P., Scornavacca C., Romiguier J., Belkhir K., Galtier N., Delsuc F. & Ranwez V. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2014, 31 : 1923-1928. A major update - OrthoMaM v10: Scaling-up orthologous coding sequence and exon alignments with more than one hundred mammalian genomes. Scornavacca C., Belkhir K., Lopez J., Dernat R., Delsuc F., Douzery E. J. P., & Ranwez V. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2019, 36 : 861-862. New database update - OrthoMaM v12: a database of curated single-copy ortholog alignments and trees to study mammalian evolutionary genomics. Allio R., Delsuc F., Belkhir K., Douzery E. J. P., Ranwez V. & Scornavacca C. Nucleic Acids Research, 2024, 52 : D529-D535. If you use this work, please email us (account needed) or leave us a short message on this discussion page. It would be greatly appreciated! Do not copy this picture illegally by ignoring the terms of the license below, as it is not in the public domain., CC BY-SA 4.0
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