Omanitherium (meaning "Oman beast" in Ancient Greek) is an extinct genus of barytheriid proboscidean that lived during the early Oligocene in Oman. It belongs to the family Barytheriidae, which represented the first large size proboscideans to appear in the fossil record and were characterized by a strong sexual dimorphism.
A cladogram of Proboscidea based on the phylogenetic analysis of Hautier et al. 2021 is below:
| Proboscidea |
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References
E. R. Seiffert, S. Nasir, A. Al-Harthy, J. R. Groenke, B. P. Kraatz, N. J. Stevens, and A. R. Al-Sayigh. 2012. Diversity in the later Paleogene proboscidean radiation: a small barytheriid from the Oligocene of Dhofar Governorate, Sultanate of Oman. Naturwissenschaften 99:133-141 ↩
M. Al-Kindi, M. Pickford, Y. Al-Sinani, I. Al-Ismaili, A. Hartman and A. Heward. 2017. Large Mammals from the Rupelian of Oman – Recent Finds. Fossil Imprint 73(3-4):300-321 ↩
Hautier, Lionel; Tabuce, Rodolphe; Mourlam, Mickaël J.; Kassegne, Koffi Evenyon; Amoudji, Yawovi Zikpi; Orliac, Maëva; Quillévéré, Frédéric; Charruault, Anne-Lise; Johnson, Ampah Kodjo Christophe; Guinot, Guillaume (2021-10-13). "New Middle Eocene proboscidean from Togo illuminates the early evolution of the elephantiform-like dental pattern". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 288 (1960). doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.1439. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 8511763. PMID 34641726. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8511763 ↩