Family of mammals belonging to even-toed ungulates
Moschidae is a family of pecoran even-toed ungulates, containing the musk deer ("Moschus") and its extinct relatives. They are characterized by long "saber teeth" instead of horns, antlers or ossicones, modest size ("Moschus" only reaches ; other taxa were even smaller) and a lack of facial glands. While various Oligocene and Miocene pecorans were previously assigned to this family, recent studies find that most should be assigned to their own clades, although further research would need to confirm these traits. As a result, "Micromeryx", "Hispanomeryx", and "Moschus" are the only undisputed moschid members, making them known from at least 18 Ma. The group was abundant across Eurasia and North America during the Miocene, but afterwards declined to only the extant genus "Moschus" by the early Pleistocene.
Taxonomy and classification.
Until the early 21st century, it was believed that the musk deer (family Moschidae) were an adjacent, sister-group to the "true deer" of the family Cervidae (caribou, moose, elk, and roughly 40–50 other species); however, a 2003 phylogenetic study by Alexandre Hassanin (of the National Museum of Natural History, France) and co., based on mitochondrial and nuclear analyses, revealed that Moschidae and Bovidae (antelope, cattle, goats, sheep), together, form a sister-clade to Cervidae. According to the study, the Cervidae diverged from the Bovidae-Moschidae clade roughly 27–28 million years ago. The following cladogram is based on this 2003 study:
After Prothero (2007)
Family Moschidae
References.
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