Department of Biology, Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York 10577, USA.
Anat Rec (Hoboken). 2010 Jan;293(1):74-90. doi: 10.1002/ar.21010.
In 1973, Vincent Maglio published a seminal monograph on the evolution of the Elephantidae, in which he revised and condensed the 100+ species named by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1931. Michel Beden further revised the African Elephantidae in 1979, but little systematic work has been done on the family since this publication. With addition of new specimens and species and revisions of chronology, a new analysis of the phylogeny and systematics of this family is warranted. A new, descriptive character dataset was generated from studies of modern elephants for use with fossil species. Parallel evolution in cranial and dental characters in all three lineages of elephants creates homoplastic noise in cladistic analysis, but new inferences about evolutionary relationships are possible. In this analysis, early Loxodonta and early African Mammuthus are virtually indistinguishable in dental morphology. The Elephas lineage is not monophyletic, and results from this analysis suggest multiple migration events out of Africa into Eurasia, and possibly back into Africa. New insight into the origin of the three lineages is also proposed, with Stegotetrabelodon leading to the Mammuthus lineage, and Primelephas as the ancestor of Loxodonta and Elephas. These new results suggest a much more complex picture of elephantid origins, evolution, and paleogeography.
1973 年，文森特·马格里奥（Vincent Maglio）发表了一篇关于象科进化的重要专题论文，其中他修订并浓缩了 1931 年亨利·费尔菲尔德·奥斯本（Henry Fairfield Osborn）命名的 100 多种物种。米歇尔·贝登（Michel Beden）在 1979 年进一步修订了非洲象科，但自那以后，该家族几乎没有进行过系统研究。随着新标本和新物种的加入以及年代学的修订，有必要对该家族的系统发育和系统学进行新的分析。从现代象的研究中生成了一个新的描述性特征数据集，用于化石物种。在所有三个象类群的颅部和牙齿特征中，平行进化会在分支分析中产生同形异源噪音，但关于进化关系的新推断是可能的。在这项分析中，早期的 Loxodonta 和早期的非洲乳齿象在牙齿形态上几乎无法区分。 Elephas 谱系不是单系的，该分析的结果表明有多次从非洲向欧亚大陆的迁徙事件，也有可能返回非洲。还提出了对三个谱系起源的新见解，Stegotetrabelodon 导致了 Mammuthus 谱系，而 Primelephas 是 Loxodonta 和 Elephas 的祖先。这些新结果表明，大象科的起源、进化和古地理情况要复杂得多。
