Craniodental Morphology And Phylogeny Of Marsupials Author Beck, Robin M. D. School of Science, Engineering and Environment University of Salford, U. K. & School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales, Australia & Division of Vertebrate Zoology (Mammalogy) American Museum of Natural History Author Voss, Robert S. Division of Vertebrate Zoology (Mammalogy) American Museum of Natural History Author Jansa, Sharon A. Bell Museum and Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior University of Minnesota text Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2022 2022-06-28 2022 457 1 353 https://bioone.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-museum-of-natural-history/volume-457/issue-1/0003-0090.457.1.1/Craniodental-Morphology-and-Phylogeny-of-Marsupials/10.1206/0003-0090.457.1.1.full journal article 10.1206/0003-0090.457.1.1 0003-0090 6971356 † Palaeothentes SPECIES SCORED: † Palaeothentes minutus , † P. lemoinei . GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS : Santa Cruz Formation, Santa Cruz Province , Argentina . AGE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: the Santa Cruz Formation spans a maximum of 14 to 19 Mya (see † Stilotherium above). ASSIGNED AGE RANGE : 19.000 –14.000 Mya. REMARKS: We scored † Palaeothentes minutus based on abundant but mostly fragmentary specimens collected by Carlos Ameghino from several localities in the early Miocene Santa Cruz Formation; this material has been revised by Marshall (1980) and Abello (2007). Bown and Fleagle (1993) subsequently collected considerable additional dental material of † P. minutus from localities in the Santa Cruz and Pinturas formations, and Marshall (1990) identified this species from the?middle Miocene (Friasian SALMA ) Río Frias Formation in Chile ; however, we did not use these additional specimens for scoring purposes. Croft (2007: table 3) reported † P. minutus from the middle Miocene (Laventan SALMA ) Quebrada Honda Fauna in southern Bolivia , but Engelman et al. (2016) subsequently referred this material to two new species († P. serratus and † P. relictus ), and we did not use it to score our † Palaeothentes terminal. Well-preserved cranial material of † Palaeothentes minutus is unavailable, but Forasiepi et al. (2014b) described a well-preserved skull and partial skeleton (MPM-PV 3566) of a congeneric species, †P. lemoinei , also from the Santa Cruz Formation. Monophyly of † Palaeothentes (excluding “† Palaeothentes ” primus ) has been found in all recent large-scale phylogenetic analyses of Paucituberculata (Abello, 2013; Rincón et al., 2015; Engelman et al., 2016; Abello et al., 2020), so we used Forasiepi et al.’s (2014b) description of the skull of †P. lemoinei to score cranial characters for our † Palaeothentes terminal. † Palaeothentes is the type genus of the family † Palaeothentidae , which is a member of the superfamily †Palaeothentoidea (Abello, 2007, 2013; Goin et al., 2009a; Rincón et al., 2015; Engelman et al., 2016; Abello et al., 2020).