Acta Palaeontologica Polonica

Enamel microstructure of the Late Cretaceous multituberculate mammal Kogaionon

Gisle Fosse, Costin Rădulescu, and Petre-Mihai Samson

Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 46 (3), 2001: 437-440

Cretaceous multituberculate mammals of Europe are poorly known, as a rule represented by isolated teeth. The only exception is the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) monotypic genus Kogaionon Rădulescu & Samson, 1996 from Romania, represented by a single skull, without dentaries, assigned to Kogaionidae Rădulescu & Samson, 1996. Another kogaionid genus is Hainina Vianey-Liaud, 1979, represented by several isolated teeth from the Paleocene of Belgium and Spain, and from the Maastrichtian of Romania. The skull of Kogaionon is roughly rectangular in palatal view, resembling superficially that of Paleocene Taeniolabis (except for having a strongly elongated snout), but the upper dentition differentiates the Kogaionidae from all other multituberculates. In this paper we studied the enamel microstructure of Kogaionon and demonstrate that it is of gigantoprismatic type.

Gisle Fosse [gisle.fosse@nhm.uio.no ], Paleontologisk Museum, Universitetet i Oslo, Sars gate 1, N-0562 Oslo, Norway; Costin Rădulescu [alex.petculescu @ dataline. ro ], Speleological Institute 'Emil Racovita ', 11 Frumoasa Street, Bucharest, Romania.


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