Peramelemorphia Ameghino, 1889

Beck, Robin M. D., Voss, Robert S. & Jansa, Sharon A., 2022, Craniodental Morphology And Phylogeny Of Marsupials, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2022 (457), pp. 1-353 : 210

Peramelemorphia Ameghino, 1889

CONTENTS: † Bulungu , † Galadi, Perameloidea , and † Yarala .

STEM AGE: 43.7 Mya (95% HPD: 39.6–47.4 Mya).

CROWN AGE: 31.4 Mya (95% HPD: 25.3–37.9 Mya).

UNAMBIGUOUS CRANIODENTAL SYNAPOMORPHIES: Facial exposure of jugal deeply bifid, with distinct anterodorsal and anteroventral processes (char. 20: 0→1; ci = 1.000); lambdoid sesamoids present (char. 89: 0→1; ci = 1.000); M1 preparacrista absent or indistinct (char. 138: 0→1; ci = 0.333); M1 pseudopreparacrista present (char. 139: 0→1; ci = 0.333); and hypoconulid notch in anterior cingulid of m2–4 absent (char. 158: 0→1; ci = 0.500).

COMMENTS: Our estimate for the divergence between Peramelemorphia and Dasyuromorphia dates to the middle Eocene. As mentioned above (see Agreodontia), isolated dental remains from the early Eocene Tingamarra Local Fauna have been identified as putatively peramelemorphian, which would predate our estimate, but the Tingamarran specimens cannot be unequivocally referred to the Peramelemorphia . Instead, the oldest definitive peramelemorphians are late Oligocene ( Travouillon et al., 2013 a, 2021; Warburton and Travouillon, 2016). The three fossils included here († Bulungu , † Galadi , † Yarala ) are late Oligocene to Miocene taxa ( Muirhead and Filan, 1995; Muirhead, 2000; Travouillon et al., 2010, 2013b; Gurovich et al., 2014; Warburton and Travouillon, 2016) and they are recovered outside the peramelemorphian crown clade (Perameloidea; see below) in our analyses, as in previous phylogenetic studies ( Travouillon et al., 2010, 2013a, 2013b, 2014 a, 2015 b, 2019, 2021; Gurovich et al., 2014; Chamberlain et al., 2015; Travouillon and Phillips, 2018). Putative early perameloids are known from the middle Miocene ( Travouillon et al., 2014a; see Perameloidea below), but these were not included here because they are only known from isolated teeth.

A recent study by Abello and Candela (2019) included morphological and total evidence phylogenetic analyses that placed members of the South American family † Argyrolagidae in a clade that was sister to Peramelemorphia (represented by Echymipera and Perameles ), but the authors acknowledged that this geographically implausible relationship might reflect convergent evolution of similar derived tarsal features; based on available evidence, argyrolagids are most likely to be paucituberculatans ( Sánchez-Villagra, 2001; Beck, 2017a; Zimicz and Goin, 2020) or polydolopimorphians ( Goin et al., 2009a; Chornogubsky and Goin, 2015; Carneiro and Oliveira, 2017a, 2017b; Carneiro, 2018, 2019; Carneiro et al., 2018).