Ailurus, the Red Cat

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Side tracking a little....

  Mickey Mortimer wrote about red pandas during the opposable digits
discussion.

  There is more to arctoid relationships concerning *Ailurus* than just
the molecurlar: Wang, 1997, also found this based on fossil material from
China, one of the rare cases in which morphology and molecules agree.
*Ailuropoda*, the giant panda, shares many of these features, as detailed,
as a consequence to increased herbivory. Convergence is often strange, but
it is harder to immitate molecules than morphology, perhaps. Use of an
inner pisiform sesamoid as "thumb" is intriguing and suggests that the
greater panda was from smaller arboreal stock. Current use would not seem
so great an immitation, but there it is nonetheless.

Wang X.-m. 1997. New cranial material of *Simocyon* from China, and its
implications for phylogenetic relationship to the red panda (*Ailurus*).
_Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology_ 17 (1): 184-198.

A well-preserved skull of *Simocyon*, an extinct hypercarnivorous
procyonid, is described from a late Miocene (Baodean; approximately 5.3-9
Ma) locality in north Shaanxi, China. New knowledge about its cranial
morphology allows insight into its phylogenetic position among musteloid
carnivorans. A sister-group relationship between the simocyonines and the
ailurines (the East Asian red panda) is proposed on the basis of cranial
and dental evidence. Shared derived characters in support of this
relationship include: highly arched zygomatic arch; posteriorly extended
posterior palatine border; long bony external auditory meatus; a
posterolateral process of promontorium; ventrally ridged paroccipital
process; anteriorly inclined coronoid crest; and lateral grooves on
canines. The simocyonine-ailurine clade is in turn postulated to be within
the procyonid clade because of its common possession of an enlarged M2 and
an elongated talonid on m2. The new fossil evidence contradicts several
recent phylogenetic studies (both morphological and molecular) that place
the red panda (*Ailurus*) in various basal positions within the ursoid
clade (including ursids, amphicyonids, and pinnipeds) instead of the
musteloid clade. Analysis of the primitive morphotype at the base of the
simocyonine-ailurine clade suggests that many of the characters in support
of the ursoid relationship for Ailurus are primitive conditions or were
independently derived within more restrictive clades.

  Before Flynn et al., there is also:

Slattery, J.P. & O'Brien, S.J. 1995. Molecular phylogeny of the red panda
(*Ailurus fulgens*). _Journal of Heredity_ 86: 413-422.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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