グリソン類(イタチ科,食肉目)の分類の現状

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This paper reviews recent knowledge on the taxonomy of fossil galictine mustelids (Carnivora, Mammalia). Since the dawn of the Late Cenozoic, the mustelids have adapted to a wide range of habitat such as tropical forest to even in ocean, and now live in every continent except Australia and Antarctica. Extant galictines consist of only two genera, Galictis and Lyncodon, in Central and South Americas, forming a minor group. However, in past, fossil galictines were distributed in the whole Northern Hemisphere. Although galictine mustelids adapted to a broad range of land habitat area from the earliest Miocene into the Pleistocene, Eurasian species become extinct during the Pleistocene. Historical studies on this taxa would add further classification on the change of paleobiogeography in Eurasian and North American mammal faunas.
2009-03-31