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Ungulate

For elephants and relatives, sometimes called ungulates or subungulates, see Paenungulata.

Ungulate
Temporal range:
Image from top to left with Artiodactyls at the top and Perissodactyla at the bottom: giraffe, plains bison, dromedary, red deer, wild boar, orca (Cetacea), plains zebra, indian rhinoceros, and brazilian tapir.
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Clade: Pan-Euungulata
Mirorder: Euungulata
Waddell et al., 2001[1]
Orders and clades
Synonyms
  • Cetungulata
    Irwin and Wilson, 1993[3]

Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjʊleɪts, -ɡjə-, -lɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyuu-layts, -⁠gyə-, -⁠lits, -⁠ləts) are members of the diverse clade Euungulata ("true ungulates"), which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves. Once part of the clade "Ungulata" along with the clade Paenungulata, "Ungulata" has since been determined to be a polyphyletic and thereby invalid clade based on molecular data. As a result, true ungulates had since been reclassified to the newer clade Euungulata in 2001 within the clade Laurasiatheria while Paenungulata has been reclassified to a distant clade Afrotheria.[4] Living ungulates are divided into two orders: Perissodactyla including equines, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; and Artiodactyla including cattle, antelope, pigs, giraffes, camels, sheep, deer, and hippopotamuses, among others. Cetaceans such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises are also classified as artiodactyls, although they do not have hooves. Most terrestrial ungulates use the hoofed tips of their toes to support their body weight while standing or moving. Two other orders of ungulates, Notoungulata and Litopterna, both native to South America, became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.

The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal". As a descriptive term, "ungulate" normally excludes cetaceans as they do not possess most of the typical morphological characteristics of other ungulates, but recent discoveries indicate that they were also descended from early artiodactyls.[5] Ungulates are typically herbivorous and many employ specialized gut bacteria to allow them to digest cellulose, though some members may deviate from this: several species of pigs and the extinct entelodonts are omnivorous, while cetaceans and the extinct mesonychians are carnivorous.

  1. ^ Peter J. Waddell, Hirohisa Kishino, Rissa Ota (2001). "A Phylogenetic Foundation for Comparative Mammalian Genomics". Genome Informatics 12: 141–154, doi:10.11234/gi1990.12.141.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cooper2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Irwin, D.M. and Wilson, A.C. (1993). "Limitations of molecular methods for establishing the phylogeny of mammals, with special reference to the position of elephants". In: F.S. Szalay, M.J. Novacek, and M.C. McKenna (eds.), Mammal Phylogeny: Placentals. pp. 257–267, Springer-Verlag, New York.
  4. ^ Gheerbrant, Emmanuel; Filippo, Andrea; Schmitt, Arnaud (2016). "Convergence of Afrotherian and Laurasiatherian Ungulate-Like Mammals: First Morphological Evidence from the Paleocene of Morocco". PLOS ONE. 11 (7): e0157556. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1157556G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157556. PMC 4934866. PMID 27384169.
  5. ^ Ursing, B. M.; Arnason, U. (1998). "Analyses of mitochondrial genomes strongly support a hippopotamus-whale clade". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 265 (1412): 2251–5. doi:10.1098/rspb.1998.0567. PMC 1689531. PMID 9881471.