Dermotherium
Dermotherium is a genus of fossil mammals closely related to the living colugos. Colugos are a small group of gliding mammals from Southeast Asia. Two species are recognized: D. major from the Late Eocene of Thailand, based on a single fragment of the lower jaw, and D. chimaera from Thailand.
About Dermotherium in brief
Dermotherium is a genus of fossil mammals closely related to the living colugos. Colugos are a small group of gliding mammals from Southeast Asia. Two species are recognized: D. major from the Late Eocene of Thailand, based on a single fragment of the lower jaw, and D. chimaera from Thailand. All sites where fossils of Derm otherium have been found probably developed in forested environments. The fossil species probably were forest dwellers, but whether they already had the gliding adaptations of the living species is unknown. The two species are similar in size, but again differ in the details of the dentition. Not enough is known of the skeleton of the fossil to assess whether the animal already possessed the gliders adaptations of living colUGos. The holotype is a lower jaw fragment in which remnants of the deciduous third lower premolar are visible. X-ray microtomography reveals the unerupted lower third incisor, canine, third premolar and fourth premolar still inside the jaw. In addition, this species is known from two jaw fragments, one bearing m1 and m2 and the other bearing m3 and m3, and two isolated molars.
The species is tentatively referred as large as the Philippine colugo and larger than the Sunda colugO and differed from both in a number of characteristics of the Dentition. In 2006, Laurent Marivaux and colleagues described a second species, Dermotheria chimaera, from material from the Oligocene ofailand. They gave it the specific name chimaero because it shares characters with both the PhilippineColugo and Sunda Colugo, the two living colugso species. In 2000, Brian Stafford and Frederick Szalay argued that DermOTHERium might not be a coluga, since the fossil is so poorly preserved that few traits can be unambiguously recognized. In 2005, Mary Silcox and colleagues reaffirmed the colUGo affinities of D Germotherium in 2005 on the basis of detailed similarities in molar morphology. The upper molars are triangular teeth with wrinkled enamel, particularly on the second upper molar, and with wrinkling enamel. The lower incisors are pectinate or comblike, bearing longitudinal rows of tines or cusps, an unusual feature of colugs. The front part of these teeth, the trigonid, is broader in D chimera than in D major.
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This page is based on the article Dermotherium published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
