Carpolestidae [SEP] parent taxon
Carpolestidae
Carpolestidae is a family of primate-like Plesiadapiformes that were prevalent in North America and Asia from the mid Paleocene through the early Eocene. Typically, they are characterized by two large upper posterior premolars and one large lower posterior premolar. They weighed about 20-150g, and were about the size of a mouse. Though they come from the order, Plesiadapiformes, that may have given rise to the primate order, carpolestids are too specialized and derived to be ancestors of primates.
Historically, the almost twenty
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of