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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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