Abstract
Apatemyids are highly specialized eutherian mammals from the Paleogene of North America and Europe. They are known almost exclusively from their dentition1–3. Only two skulls have ever been described, and the postcranial skeleton has remained a complete mystery. Reconstructions of apatemyid adaptations for a specific locomotion or diet had to be speculative, even when some similarities to the dentition of the lemurif orm primate Daubentonia and the marsupial Dactylopsila were noticed1,4,5. Now, three nearly complete skeletons are available, and they show an extreme elongation of selected fingers. Thus, apatemyids are a third group of mammals (with Dactylopsila and Daubentonia6) convergently specialized for feeding on wood-boring insects.
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Koenigswald, W., Schierning, HP. The ecological niche of an extinct group of mammals, the early Tertiary apatemyids. Nature 326, 595–597 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/326595a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/326595a0
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