South American native ungulates

Common card · No. 484255

The South American native ungulates, commonly abbreviated as SANUs, are an extinct group of placental mammals closely related to or resembling living ungulates that were indigenous to South America. They existed from the early Paleocene (at least 63 million years ago) until the end of the Late Pleistocene (~12,000 years ago). They represented a dominant element of South America's Cenozoic terrestrial mammal fauna prior to the arrival of living ungulate groups in South America during the Pliocene and Pleistocene as part of the Great American Interchange. They comprise five major groups conventionally ranked as orders—Astrapotheria, Litopterna, Notoungulata, Pyrotheria, and Xenungulata—as well as the "condylarth" groups Didolodontidae and Kollpaniinae. It has been proposed that some or all of the members of this group form a clade, named Meridiungulata, though the relationships of South American ungulates remain largely unresolved. The two largest groups of South American ungulates, the...

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