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

IVPP-IR > 中科院古脊椎所（2000年以后）

	An early Oligocene fossil demonstrates treeshrews are slowly evolving "living fossils"
	Li, Qiang 1,2; Ni, Xijun 1,2
	2016-01-14
发表期刊	SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
卷号	6
文章类型	Article
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标题词	Science & Technology
关键词[WOS]	PHYLOGENETIC IMPLICATIONS ; FUNCTIONAL-MORPHOLOGY ; TUPAIIDS MAMMALIA ; HOMINOID LOCALITY ; SCANDENTIA ; PRIMATES ; SKELETON ; SUPPORT ; YUNNAN ; CHINA
收录类别	SCI
语种	英语
WOS研究方向	Science & Technology - Other Topics
WOS类目	Multidisciplinary Sciences
WOS记录号	WOS:000368150900001
引用统计
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.205/handle/311034/7152
专题	中科院古脊椎所（2000年以后）
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).