A long-forgotten 'dinosaur' bone from a museum cabinet, uncovered to be a Japan's iconic extinct mammal, Paleoparadoxia (Desmostylia, Mammalia)

New data from the first discovered paleoparadoxiid (Desmostylia) specimen shed light into the morphological variation of the genus Neoparadoxia

Desmostylia is an extinct clade of marine mammals with two major sub-clades, Desmostylidae and Paleoparadoxiidae, known from Oligocene to Miocene strata of the North Pacific coastline. Within Paleoparadoxiidae, three genera have been identified: Archaeoparadoxia, Paleoparadoxia, and Neoparadoxia. The latter taxon is the geochronologically youngest palaeoparadoxiid and Neoparadoxia is characterized by a comparatively larger body size, although it is known only from a few specimens within a short temporal and geographic range. Here we report the discovery of an isolated tooth, which we identify as Neoparadoxia cf. N. cecilialina, constituting only the second individual specimen of Neoparadoxia with preserved dentition yet reported. This specimen was collected near Corona, California, USA, and we attribute it to the “Topanga” Formation, extending the geographic range of this taxon in Southern California. While the exact geographic locality was not recorded when it was collected in 1913, we establish two potential localities based on associated hand-written museum label and new stratigraphic information. Although initially identified as Desmostylus hesperus, this specimen of Neoparadoxia was collected 10 years before the first named paleoparadoxiid from Japan. We expect that description of more complete desmostylian material from elsewhere in Southern California will clarify the taxonomic richness and paleoecological role of this clade in Cenozoic marine mammal assemblages.

The phylogeny of desmostylians revisited: proposal of new clades based on robust phylogenetic hypotheses

Background

Desmostylia is a clade of extinct aquatic mammals with no living members. Today, this clade is considered belonging to either Afrotheria or Perissodactyla. In the currently-accepted taxonomic scheme, Desmostylia includes two families, 10 to 12 genera, and 13–14 species. There have been relatively few phylogenetic analyses published on desmostylian interrelationship compared to other vertebrate taxa, and two main, alternative phylogenetic hypotheses have been proposed in previous studies. One major problem with those previous studies is that the numbers of characters and OTUs were small.

Methods

In this study, we analyzed the phylogenetic interrelationship of Desmostylia based on a new data matrix that includes larger numbers of characters and taxa than in any previous studies. The new data matrix was compiled mainly based on data matrices of previous studies and included three outgroups and 13 desmostylian ingroup taxa. Analyses were carried out using five kinds of parsimonious methods.

Results

Strict consensus trees of the most parsimonious topologies obtained in all analyses supported the monophyly of Desmostylidae and paraphyly of traditional Paleoparadoxiidae. Based on these results, we propose phylogenetic definitions of the clades Desmostylidae and Paleoparadoxiidae based on common ancestry.