Ungulate
| Ungulate Temporal range:
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|---|---|
| Image from top to left with artiodactyls at the top and Perissodactyla at the bottom: South African giraffe, plains bison, dromedary, red deer, wild boar, orca (Cetacea), plains zebra, Indian rhinoceros, and Brazilian tapir. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Clade: | Pan-Euungulata |
| Mirorder: | Waddell et al., 2001[1] |
| Orders and clades | |
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| Synonyms | |
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Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjʊleɪts, -ɡjə-, -lɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyuu-layts, -gyə-, -lits, -ləts) are members of the diverse clade Euungulata (/juːˌʌŋɡjʊˈleɪtə/; 'true ungulates'), which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves. Once part of the taxon "Ungulata" along with paenungulates and tubulidentates, as well as several extinct taxa,[6] "Ungulata" has since been determined to be a polyphyletic grouping based on molecular data. As a result, true ungulates had since been reclassified to the newer clade Euungulata in 2001 within the clade Laurasiatheria, while Paenungulata and Tubulidentata had been reclassified to the distant clade Afrotheria.[1][7][8] Alternatively, some authors use the name Ungulata to designate the same clade as Euungulata.[4][5]
Living ungulates are divided into two orders: Perissodactyla including equines, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; and Artiodactyla including cattle, antelope, pigs, giraffes, camels, sheep, deer, and hippopotamuses, among others. Cetaceans such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises are also classified as artiodactyls, although they do not have hooves. Most terrestrial ungulates use the hoofed tips of their toes to support their body weight while standing or moving. Two other orders of ungulates, Notoungulata and Litopterna, both native to South America, became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.
The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal". As a descriptive term, "ungulate" normally excludes cetaceans as they do not possess most of the typical morphological characteristics of other ungulates, but recent discoveries indicate that they were also descended from early artiodactyls.[9] Ungulates are typically herbivorous and many employ specialized gut bacteria to enable them to digest cellulose, though some members may deviate from this: several species of pigs and the extinct entelodonts are omnivorous, while cetaceans and the extinct mesonychians are carnivorous.
- ^ a b Peter J. Waddell, Hirohisa Kishino, Rissa Ota (2001). "A Phylogenetic Foundation for Comparative Mammalian Genomics". Genome Informatics 12: 141–154, doi:10.11234/gi1990.12.141.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Cooper2014was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Irwin, D.M. and Wilson, A.C. (1993). "Limitations of molecular methods for establishing the phylogeny of mammals, with special reference to the position of elephants". In: F.S. Szalay, M.J. Novacek, and M.C. McKenna (eds.), Mammal Phylogeny: Placentals. pp. 257–267, Springer-Verlag, New York.
- ^ a b de Queiroz, K.; Cantino, P. D.; Gauthier, J. A., eds. (2020). "Ungulata C. Linnaeus 1766 [J. D. Archibald], converted clade name". Phylonyms: A Companion to the PhyloCode. Boca Raton: CRC Press. pp. 943–947. ISBN 978-1-138-33293-5.
- ^ a b "Ungulata". RegNum. Retrieved 15 August 2025.
- ^ McKenna, M.C. (1975). "Toward a phylogenetic classification of the Mammalia". In Luckett, W.P.; Szalay, F.S. (eds.). Phylogeny of the primates: a multidisciplinary approach (Proceedings of WennerGren Symposium no. 61, Burg Wartenstein, Austria, July 6–14, 1974. New York: Plenum. pp. 21–46. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-2166-8_2. ISBN 978-1-4684-2168-2.
- ^ Gheerbrant, Emmanuel; Filippo, Andrea; Schmitt, Arnaud (2016). "Convergence of Afrotherian and Laurasiatherian Ungulate-Like Mammals: First Morphological Evidence from the Paleocene of Morocco". PLOS ONE. 11 (7): e0157556. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1157556G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157556. PMC 4934866. PMID 27384169.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link) - ^ Püschel, Hans P; Shelley, Sarah L; Williamson, Thomas E; Perini, Fernando A; Wible, John R; Brusatte, Stephen L (2024-09-02). "A new dentition-based phylogeny of Litopterna (Mammalia: Placentalia) and 'archaic' South American ungulates". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 202 (1) zlae095. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae095. ISSN 0024-4082.
- ^ Ursing, B. M.; Arnason, U. (1998). "Analyses of mitochondrial genomes strongly support a hippopotamus-whale clade". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 265 (1412): 2251–5. doi:10.1098/rspb.1998.0567. PMC 1689531. PMID 9881471.