The Placental Mammal Ancestor and the Post–K-Pg Radiation of Placentals
- M. O'Leary, J. Bloch, Andrea L. Cirranello
- Geography, BiologyScience
- 8 February 2013
A phylogenetic tree shows that crown clade Placentalia and placental orders originated after the K-Pg boundary, but phenomic signals overturn molecular signals to show Sundatheria (Dermoptera + Scandentia) as the sister taxon of Primates, a close link between Proboscidea and Sirenia (sea cows), and the monophyly of echolocating Chiroptera (bats).
A euprimate skull from the early Eocene of China
- Xijun Ni, Yuanqing Wang, Yaoming Hu, Chuankui Li
- BiologyNature
- 2004
A partially preserved euprimate skull with nearly complete upper and lower dentition is described, which represents a new species of Teilhardina and constitutes the first discovery of the genus in Asia and suggests that the last common ancestor of euprimates was probably a small, diurnal, visually oriented predator.
The oldest known primate skeleton and early haplorhine evolution
A nearly complete and partly articulated skeleton of a primitive haplorhine primate from the early Eocene of China, about 55 million years ago, is reported, the oldest fossil primate of this quality ever recovered and further constrains the age of divergence between tarsiiforms and anthropoids.
Late Oligocene-Miocene mid-latitude aridification and wind patterns in the Asian interior
The Asian interior has the largest mid-latitude arid zone in the Northern Hemisphere, and so has become increasingly attractive for studying the initiation and the past extent of aridification in…
Oligocene primates from China reveal divergence between African and Asian primate evolution
The discovery of a diverse primate fauna from the early Oligocene of southern China, which is dominated by strepsirhines, indicating that the EOT functioned as a critical evolutionary filter constraining the subsequent course of primate evolution across the Old World.
Comparative study of notoungulate (Placentalia, Mammalia) bony labyrinths and new phylogenetically informative inner ear characters
- T. E. Macrini, J. J. Flynn, Xijun Ni, D. Croft, A. Wyss
- BiologyJournal of Anatomy
- 1 November 2013
The inner ears of the notoungulates Altitypotherium chucalensis, Pachyrukhos moyani and Hegetotheriidae are described based on reconstructions of bony labyrinths obtained from computed tomography imagery and estimates of the low‐frequency hearing limits in Notoungulate based on the ratio of radii of the apical and basal turns of the cochlea are provided.
Cranial remains of an Eocene tarsier.
- James B. Rossie, Xijun Ni, K. Beard
- BiologyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
- 21 March 2006
Cranial material of a fossil tarsiid from the middle-Eocene Shanghuang fissure-fillings in southern Jiangsu Province, China is described, indicating that tarsiers already possessed greatly enlarged orbits and a haplorhine oronasal configuration by the time they are first documented in the fossil record during the middle Eocene.
Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna, and climate at the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary in Asia
- Jimin Sun, Xijun Ni, B. Windley
- Environmental Science, GeographyScientific Reports
- 12 December 2014
The results show that climate change forced a turnover of flora and fauna, suggesting there was a change from large-size perissodactyl-dominant fauna in forests under a warm-temperate climate to small rodent/lagomorph-Dominantfauna in forest-steppe in a dry- Temperate climate across the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary.
First skull of Antillothrix bernensis, an extinct relict monkey from the Dominican Republic
- A. Rosenberger, S. Cooke, R. Rímoli, Xijun Ni, Luis Cardoso
- BiologyProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological…
- 7 January 2011
The nearly pristine remains of Antillothrix bernensis, a capuchin-sized (Cebus) extinct platyrrhine from the Dominican Republic, have been found submerged in an underwater cave, marking the first specimen of an extinct Caribbean primate with diagnostic craniodental and skeletal parts in association and demonstrating that insular Caribbean monkeys are not monophyletically related and may not be the product of a single colonizing event.
A New Cricetid Rodent from the Early Oligocene of Yunnan, China, and Its Evolutionary Implications for Early Eurasian Cricetids
- Olivier Maridet, Xijun Ni
- Biology
- 1 January 2013
It is deduced that the first diversification and dispersal of the family Cricetidae across Eurasia must have occurred well before the Eocene-Oligocene transition.
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