HOME --> CLASS MAMMALIA
--> ORDER RODENTIA
--> SUBORDER HYSTRICOMORPHA
--> INFRAORDER HYSTRICOGNATHI
FAMILY Octodontidae
Author: | Waterhouse, 1839. | Actual Date: | 1840 | Citation: | Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1839: 172. | Comments: | Sometimes considered the most primitive group of South American hystricognaths with numerous fossil genera from Oligocene on, but Reig (1986:418) reserved this distinction for the Echimyidae. Ctenomys is often placed here as a subfamily, and is closely related to octodontids (see comments under Ctenomyidae and in Cook et al. (1990:22-23). Chromosomal variation is not as conservative as previously thought, 2n=38-102 and includes the only known mammalian tetraploid (Gallardo et al., 1999). Molecular data (Gallardo and Kirsch, 2000; Honeycutt et al., 2003) support the monophyly of the Octodontidae and the sister taxon relationship with the Ctenomyidae. |
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