131
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Article

Systematics of the late Eocene ‘oreonetine’ oreodonts (Merycoidodontidae: Artiodactyla)

, , ORCID Icon & ORCID Icon
Received 12 Jan 2023, Accepted 02 Jul 2023, Published online: 16 Jul 2023
 

ABSTRACT

The small, primitive ‘oreonetine’ oreodonts from the late Eocene (Chadronian) of North America have long been a systematic mess with gross oversplitting, failure to recognise post-mortem distortion of specimens and many errors in their descriptions. We describe some new fossils and review the group for the first time since 1956. Of the six genera and nine species recognised by Schultz & Falkenbach (1956), only three genera (Oreonetes, Limnenetes, and Bathygenys) and six species are now considered valid. The ‘Oreonetinae’ is a paraphyletic wastebasket group because some members are closer to more derived oreodonts than others, and Limnenetes is a primitive leptauchenine, not a merycoidodontine. These small, rare late Eocene oreodonts found only in Wyoming, Montana, and Texas are the precursors to the enormous radiation of oreodonts in the early Oligocene.

Acknowledgments

We thank Richard Tedford, Malcolm McKenna, Earl Manning, John Flynn, Meng Jin, Ruth O’Leary, and Judy Galkin for access to the AMNH and F:AM collections over the years. We thank A. Henrici and M. Lamanna for access to the CM collections. We thank S. Skwarcan, C. Bell, and C. Sagebiel for images and measurements of the TxVP specimens. We thank the late M.F. Skinner and the Frick Lab crews for all their discoveries that made this work possible. We thank E. Prothero for Photoshopping the illustrations. We thank M.O. Woodburne and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 61.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 471.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.