Coloniatherium
genus of mammals
Coloniatherium is a meridiolestid mammal from the Late Cretaceous of Argentina. The single species, Coloniatherium cilinskii, was a large member of the family Mesungulatidae.
Taxonomy
Coloniatherium was named in 2009 by Guillermo Rougier and colleagues and assigned to the family Mesungulatidae within the Dryolestoidea. Dryolestoidea is an extinct mammalian group that occurred in North America, Eurasia, and Africa during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, but survived in South America during the Late Cretaceous and into the Paleocene. The generic name, Coloniatherium, combines the name of the La Colonia Formation, the stratigraphical unit where fossils of the animal were found, and its namesake the Sierra de La Colonia with the Greek therion "beast". The specific name, cilinskii, honors Juan Cilinski, a local rancher who helped with the fieldwork that led to the discovery of Coloniatherium.
Description
Coloniatherium is known from a few jaw fragments, a number of isolated teeth, and some petrosals (ear bones). It was a large mesungulatid. The animal had an unknown number of incisors (probably two or three in the lower jaw), one canine, three premolars, and three molars per jaw quadrant. It is larger than Mesungulatum, has broader molars, and the back molars are more reduced; the two also differ in numerous details of tooth morphology.
“Coloniatherium” enters the record as genus of mammals. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Coloniatherium, genus and mammals can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Coloniatherium” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Coloniatherium, genus and mammals provides the most credible route into that argument.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5148434. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coloniatherium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.