Vincelestes
Extinct family of mammals
Vincelestes ("Vince's thief") is an extinct genus of mammal that lived in what is now South America during the Early Cretaceous. It is closely related to modern therian mammals as part of Cladotheria.
01Description
Vincelestes neuquenianus is the only species known to date. Specimens were found in La Amarga Formation of southern Neuquén Province, Argentina. The remains of only nine individuals were recovered from this site.
The back teeth of Vincelestes were similar to those of therians in that they were capable of cutting and grinding. This enabled them to process food more efficiently.
02Diet
In one study on Mesozoic mammal mandibles, Vincelestes plots with herbivorous and omnivorous taxa.
03Phylogeny
Although not the direct ancestor of therians, Vincelestes is important because it gives an idea of what the ancestor of both placental and marsupial mammals might have looked like, and also gives an indication of when these mammals may have originated.
Some studies inversely recovered the genus as an australosphenidan, although current thought places Vincelestes as sister to marsupials and placental mammals.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Vincelestes”, 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:
- Artistic reconstruction of Vincelestes.PNG by Adrian W., CC BY-SA 3.0
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