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Brontotheriidae is a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Perissodactyla, the order that includes horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs.Superficially, they looked rather like rhinos with some developing bony nose horns, and were some of the earliest mammals to have evolved large body sizes of several tonnes.
Rhinos and tapirs are more closely related to each other than to horses. The separation of horses from other perissodactyls took place according to molecular genetic analysis in the Paleocene some 56 million years ago, while the rhinos and tapirs split off in the lower-middle Eocene, about 47 million years ago.
Tapiroidea is a superfamily of perissodactyls which includes the modern tapirs and their extinct relatives. Taxonomically, they are placed in suborder Ceratomorpha along with the rhino superfamily, Rhinocerotoidea.The first members of Tapiroidea appeared during the Early Eocene, 55 million years ago, and were present in North America and Asia during the Eocene.
Perissodactyls range in size from the 1.8 m (6 ft) long Baird's tapir to the 4 m (13 ft) long white rhinoceros. Over 50 million domesticated donkeys and 58 million horses are used in farming worldwide, while four species of perissodactyl have potentially fewer than 200 members remaining.
Malayan tapir, a first species of tapir to be discovered, is described. 1824. Publication of the French physician Henri Dutrochet's Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire anatomique et physiologique des végétaux et des animaux setting forth a physiological theory of the cell. 1824.
Brontotheres, tapirs, and rhinos evolve. c. 49 Ma – Whales return to the water. c. 45 Ma – Camels evolve in North America. c. 40 Ma – Age of the Catarrhini parvorder; first canines evolve. Lepidopteran insects become recognizable. Gastornis goes extinct. Basilosaurus evolves. c. 37 Ma – First Nimravids.
A rhinoceros (/ r aɪ ˈ n ɒ s ər ə s / ry-NOSS-ə-rəss; from Ancient Greek ῥινόκερως (rhinókerōs) 'nose-horned'; from ῥίς (rhis) 'nose' and κέρας (kéras) 'horn'; [1] pl.: rhinoceros or rhinoceroses), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls) in the family ...
In 1948, Russian palaeontologist Valentin Teryaev suggested it was semi-aquatic with a dome-like horn, and resembled a hippo because the animal had four toes like a wetland tapir rather than the three toes in other rhinos, but Elasmotherium has since been shown to have had only three functional toes, [6] and Teryaev's reconstruction has not ...