Miopetaurista
| Miopetaurista Temporal range:
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|---|---|
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Rodentia |
| Family: | Sciuridae |
| Tribe: | Pteromyini |
| Genus: | †Miopetaurista Kretzoi, 1962 |
| Species | |
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Miopetaurista crusafonti | |
Miopetaurista is an extinct genus of flying squirrels in the family Sciuridae. Fossils of this genus have been found from the Miocene and Pliocene of Europe (France, Germany[1]), Asia (China[2]), and North America (Florida,[3][4] Tennessee[5][6][7]).
Description
[edit]A partial skeleton from the Miocene Spain indicates that Miopetaurista very closely resembles living Petaurista giant flying squirrels in overall anatomy and therefore probably ecology.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ Grau-Camats, Montserrat; Bertrand, Ornella C.; Prieto, Jérôme; López-Torres, Sergi; Silcox, Mary T.; Casanovas-Vilar, Isaac (2022). "A Miopetaurista (Rodentia, Sciuridae) cranium from the Middle Miocene of Bavaria (Germany) and brain evolution in flying squirrels". Papers in Palaeontology. 8 (4): e1454. doi:10.1002/spp2.1454. ISSN 2056-2802.
- ^ "Fossilworks: Miopetaurista".
- ^ a b Casanovas-Vilar, Isaac; Garcia-Porta, Joan; Fortuny, Josep; Sanisidro, Óscar; Prieto, Jérôme; Querejeta, Marina; Llácer, Sergio; Robles, Josep M.; Bernardini, Federico; Alba, David M. (2018-10-09). "Oldest skeleton of a fossil flying squirrel casts new light on the phylogeny of the group". eLife. 7. doi:10.7554/eLife.39270. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 6177260. PMID 30296996.
- ^ Webb, Sawney David (1974). Pleistocene Mammals of Florida. University Presses of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-0361-0.
- ^ Grau-Camats, Montserrat; Casanovas-Vilar, Isaac; Crowe, Cheyenne J.; Samuels, Joshua X. (2025-02-21). "Gliding between continents: a review of the North American record of the giant flying squirrel Miopetaurista (Rodentia, Sciuridae) with the description of new material from the Gray Fossil Site (Tennessee)". Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 32 (1): 8. doi:10.1007/s10914-025-09751-w. ISSN 1573-7055.
- ^ Randall, Ian (2025-02-26). "North America had giant, cat-sized flying squirrels 4.75 million years ago". Newsweek. Retrieved 2025-03-26.
- ^ Pester, Patrick (2025-02-28). "Giant flying squirrels as big as cats once lived in Tennessee". livescience.com. Retrieved 2025-03-26.
