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Aeluroidea, Feloidea, and Feliformia?
editI've been doing my own personal research on the topic, and I can't figure out the difference between Aeluroidea, Feloidea, and Feliformia. Here on Wikipedia, Feloidea redirects to Feliformia, but from what I can tell, Feloidea is a superfamily and Feliformia is a suborder. Are they really the same thing? At the same time however, Aeluroidea is described as superfamily as well. I was tempted to conclude that maybe they all describe the same group of animals, but then I found this page -- http://www.helsinki.fi/~mhaaramo/metazoa/deuterostoma/chordata/synapsida/eutheria/carnivora/aeluroidea/aeluroidea.html -- and I have decided I have no idea what's going on anymore. I think if someone smarter than me could straighten this out and put it on here, that would be beyond helpful to anyone else interested in the topic! 141.158.220.207 (talk) 03:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
With no absolute consensus within the scientific community as to what constitutes a species, it is not surprising that there is disagreement over the higher levels of classification! However, there is supposedly a naming convention that assigns certain suffixes to various levels of taxonomic rank - of course names in use prior to the convention may have continued in use.
One problem with the convention is that it is not universally applied. For example, the ending 'iformes' is used to denote suborders of fish and birds, but for mammals and invertebrates it is used for infraorders (effectively sub-suborders)! The animal suffix for superfamiles is 'oidea', whereas for families it is 'idae' and for subfamilies it is 'inae'.
According to this convention, your linked article must be wrong!
My understanding was that, at one time, Carnivora was split into 2 sub-orders: i) the seals/sea lions & walruses; and ii) everything else. The 'land' group was then further subdivided - some people grouped the, at the time, eight families into two superfamilies, whereas others used two (sub-)suborders. Whatever names you gave these groups, you were effectively describing the same set of animals.
The continuing discovery of both new types of fossil animal and more complete remains of previously discovered animals (remember many species were first described on the basis of incomplete skeletons; and in some cases only a few bones), coupled with the re-evaluation of relationships between living animals (from the study of gene sequences) has led to a proliferation in both the number of named species/genera etc as well as the number of taxonomic levels.
Errata
editThe superfamily can't be both extant and extinct at the same time! Irrespective of how many members of a group are extinct, as long as one member is extant, the group is extant. I have therefore removed 'and extict'.
'Nandinia' is not a family; it is the genus that African Palm Civets belong to. Some authorities place this genus in the family Nandiniidae; others include it in the Viverridae with the other civets. I have removed the reference to 'Nandinia'- the wording says some families, so you don't have to list them all.
The wording implies that 'Africanictis' - 'Stenoplesictis' are all extinct families; this is false, they are merely extinct genera! According to wiki articles, Asiavorator is in Viverridae, Proailurus is in Felidae and Stenoplesictis is in the extinct family Stenoplesictidae. I have created a new paragrapgh for these taxa.
Classification
editThis article seems to be based very heavily on info from the Palaeobiology databse.
I note that there are some major disagreements between this database and the various wiki articles on the carnivora members (which include references to other sources). The most glaring difference is with the extinct Barbourofelidae: in the wiki articles, they are the 'sister' family to Felidae, yet the database lists them as being a sister taxon to the Caniformia and Feliformia!
One point of view is definitely wrong, the question is which one? More precisely, what is the one preferred by the majority of scientists at this time?
Wikipedia needs to adopt a consistent attitute - we don't want articles that contradict one another.
If, for example, you are writing an article about the mongoose family and you note that the current consensus is that they are most closely releated to the civet family, then please make sure that the article on the civet family agrees with this view.Glevum (talk) 01:55, 4 August 2012 (UTC)