Scientific name Barbourofelidae Phylum Chordata Order Carnivores | Rank Family | |
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Similar Nimravidae, Barbourofelis, Mammal, Carnivores, Feliformia | ||
Barbourofelidae is an extinct family of mammalian carnivores of the suborder Feliformia that lived in North America, Eurasia and Africa during the Miocene epoch (16.9—9.0 Ma) and existed for about 7.9 million years.
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Taxonomy
The Barbourofelinae were named by Schultz et al. (1970). The type genus is Barbourofelis. It was assigned to Nimravidae by Bryant (1991); and to Carnivora by Morlo et al. (2004).
Barbourofelidae was previously classified as a subfamily of the extinct Nimravidae, but is now thought to be taxonomically closer to the Felidae than to the Nimravidae, and has subsequently been reranked as a distinct family by Morlo et al. (2004). Barbourofelids first appear in the fossil record in the Early Miocene of Africa. By the end of the Early Miocene, a land bridge had opened between Africa and Eurasia, allowing for a faunal exchange between the two continents. Barbourofelids migrated at least three times from Africa to Europe (Morlo 2006). While the genus Sansanosmilus evolved in Europe, barbourofelids also migrated through Eurasia and reached North America by the late Miocene, represented there solely by the genus Barbourofelis.
Classification
Phylogeny
The following cladogram is based on Robles et al (2013) and uses the reassigned genera as described therein.