Kingdom Animalia Order Carnivora Infraorder Arctoidea Gestation period Walrus: 15 – 16 months Rank Superfamily | Phylum Chordata Suborder Caniformia Scientific name Arctoidea Higher classification Caniformia Length Walrus: 3.6 m | |
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Lower classifications Pinniped, Earless seal, Walrus, Sea lion | ||
Arctoidea is an infraorder of extinct and extant mostly carnivorous mammals which include the extinct group Hemicyonidae (dog-bears), and extant groups Musteloidea (weasels, raccoons, skunks, red pandas), Pinnipedia (seals, sea lions), and Ursidae (bears), found in all continents from the Eocene, 46 million years ago, to the present. Arctoids are caniforms, along with dogs (canids) and extinct bear dogs (Amphicyonidae). The earliest caniforms were superficially similar to martens, which are tree-dwelling mustelids. Together with cats, caniforms comprise the order Carnivora.
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Taxonomy
Arctoidea was named by Flower (1869). It was reranked as the unranked clade Arctoidea by Hunt (2001), Hunt (2002) and Hunt (2002); it was reranked as the infraorder Arctoidea by Koretsky (2001), Zhai et al. (2003) and Labs Hochstein (2007). It was assigned to Carnivora by Flower (1883), Barnes (1987), Barnes (1988), Carroll (1988), Barnes (1989), Barnes (1992), Hunt (2001), Hunt (2002) and Hunt (2002); and to Caniformia by Tedford (1976), Bryant (1991), Wang and Tedford (1992), Tedford et al. (1994), Koretsky (2001), Zhai et al. (2003), Wang et al. (2005), Owen (2006), Peigné et al. (2006) and Labs Hochstein (2007).
Family tree
The cladogram is based on molecular phylogeny of six genes in Flynn, 2005.