Eutheria

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Eutheria (from Ancient Greek εὐ- (eú-), meaning "true, well", and θηρίον (thēríon), meaning "beast", and thus, "true beasts"), also called Pan-Placentalia, is the clade consisting of placental mammals and all therian mammals that are more closely related to placentals than to marsupials. Placentalia is the only surviving taxon of eutherians, and Eutheria is often used as a synonym of Placentalia in zoological contexts. Eutherians are distinguished from non-eutherians by various phenotypic traits of the feet, ankles, jaws and teeth. All living placental mammals lack epipubic bones, which are present in all other living mammals (marsupials and monotremes). This allows for expansion of the abdomen during pregnancy, though epipubic bones are present in a number of primitive eutherians. Eutheria was named in 1872 by Theodore Gill; in 1880, Thomas Henry Huxley defined it to encompass a more broadly defined group than Placentalia. The earliest unambiguous eutherians are known from the Early Cretaceous...

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