Gypsonictops
Extinct genus of mammals / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Gypsonictops is an extinct genus of leptictidan mammals of the family Gypsonictopidae, which was described in 1927 by George Gaylord Simpson. Species in this genus were small mammals and the first representatives of the order Leptictida,[1] that appeared during the Upper Cretaceous.
Gypsonictops | |
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P4 tooth of a specimen | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | †Leptictida |
Family: | †Gypsonictopidae Van Valen, 1967 |
Genus: | †Gypsonictops Simpson, 1927 |
Species | |
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The genus is thought to have gone extinct before the Cenozoic began, but there are indications that it may have survived into the early Paleocene. Fossils have been found in the United States, Belgium, and Uzbekistan.[2]
Like Cimolestes or Daulestes, it is possible that they had some distant relationship with the ungulates.[3] It is one of the few eutherians that existed in North America during the Campanian, a period in which the multituberculates and the metatherians were the dominant ones on the continent.[2]