An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils"

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	An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils"
	Li, Qiang 1,2; Ni, Xijun 1,2
刊名	SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
	2016-01-14
卷号	6
文献子类	Article
英文摘要	Treeshrews are widely considered a "living model" of an ancestral primate, and have long been called "living fossils". Actual fossils of treeshrews, however, are extremely rare. We report a new fossil species of Ptilocercus treeshrew recovered from the early Oligocene (similar to 34 Ma) of China that represents the oldest definitive fossil record of the crown group of treeshrews and nearly doubles the temporal length of their fossil record. The fossil species is strikingly similar to the living Ptilocercus lowii, a species generally recognized as the most plesiomorphic extant treeshrew. It demonstrates that Ptilocercus treeshrews have undergone little evolutionary change in their morphology since the early Oligocene. Morphological comparisons and phylogenetic analysis support the long-standing idea that Ptilocercus treeshrews are morphologically conservative and have probably retained many characters present in the common stock that gave rise to archontans, which include primates, flying lemurs, plesiadapiforms and treeshrews. This discovery provides an exceptional example of slow morphological evolution in a mammalian group over a period of 34 million years. The persistent and stable tropical environment in Southeast Asia through the Cenozoic likely played a critical role in the survival of such a morphologically conservative lineage.
WOS关键词	PHYLOGENETIC IMPLICATIONS ; FUNCTIONAL-MORPHOLOGY ; TUPAIIDS MAMMALIA ; HOMINOID LOCALITY ; SCANDENTIA ; PRIMATES ; SKELETON ; SUPPORT ; YUNNAN ; CHINA
WOS研究方向	Science & Technology - Other Topics
语种	英语
WOS记录号	WOS:000368150900001
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://124.16.247.212/handle/311034/7152]
专题	古脊椎动物与古人类研究所_图书馆1
作者单位	1.Chinese Acad Sci, Key Lab Vertebrate Evolut & Human Origins, Inst Vertebrate Palaeontol & Palaeoanthropol, Beijing 100044, Peoples R China 2.CAS Ctr Excellence Tibetan Plateau Earth Sci, Beijing 100101, Peoples R China
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Li, Qiang,Ni, Xijun. An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils"[J]. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS,2016,6.
APA	Li, Qiang,&Ni, Xijun.(2016).An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils".SCIENTIFIC REPORTS,6.
MLA	Li, Qiang,et al."An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils"".SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 6(2016).