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【Main Contents】
The discovery of the succession of the Paleocene faunas
in China during the last twenty years has been well-known since the Paleocene
fossil remains were first reported by Young and Chow in 1962. More than
60 genera and 130 species of Paleocene mammals have been described up
to now. The most spectacular discovery among them is the well-preserved
skeleton of an edentate-like mammal, Ernanodon, the study of which led
to the present memoir. The specimen was collected from the Late Paleocene
deposits (Datang Member of the Nongshan Formation), Nanxiong Basin, Guangdong
Province, during a harvest field season in 1973 by a team of IVPP. The
list of the mammalian fossils collected from the same member with Ernanodon
is cited as following: Edentata has long been considered as an order of
mammals mainly confined to the South American continent. Ernanodon, the
earliest known relative of this order from outside of that continent ,
has attracted not only much scientific interest but also arguments, since
the preliminary report was published )Ding, 1979). Together with undescribed
notoungulates, it raises difficult questions for the current popular hypotheses
of the origin and the distribution of some mammals largely confined to
South America, At the beginning of the study, even some time later, it
would never have been thought of an edentate because of the zoogeographic
barrier. It was not recognized as an edentate until comparing with Palaeanodonts,
especially with the original specimens of that group, of North American
Paleogene edentate-like mammals. The main part of this memoir consists
of the description and the discussion of the systematics of Ernanodon
which are given as detailed as possible. In agreement with recognizing
a suborder for palaeanodont as Pholidots (Emry, 1970), the new suborder
Ernanodonta is erected. The fossils, as well as the Living families of
the Edentata, are briefly introduced in Chinese text to the readers who
are not familiar with the order Edentata. The functional analysis of the
cranial and the postcranial skeleton, strongly indication scratch-digging,
are also included.
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