Leptictida
| Leptictidans Temporal range: Late Cretaceous - Oligocene
Possible descendant taxon Placentalia survives to present | |
|---|---|
| Fossil specimen of Leptictidium auderiense | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Clade: | Eutheria |
| Order: | †Leptictida McKenna, 1975 |
| Subgroups | |
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Leptictida (leptos iktis "small/slender weasel") is a possibly paraphyletic extinct order of eutherian mammals. Their classification is contentious: according to cladistic studies, they may be (distantly) related to Euarchontoglires (rodents, primates and their relatives), although they are more recently regarded as the first branch to split from basal eutherians. One recent large-scale cladistic analysis of eutherian mammals favored lepictidans as close to the placental crown-clade; and several other recent analyses that included data from Cretaceous non-eutherian mammals found Leptictis to belong to the superorder Afrotheria.
The most recent phylogenetic studies recover it as actually a paraphyletic assemblage leading to Placentalia.