Ungulate
group of tetrapods that use the tips of their toes or hoofs to walk on
Ungulates are members of the diverse clade Euungulata, which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves. Once part of the taxon "Ungulata" along with paenungulates and tubulidentates, as well as several extinct taxa, "Ungulata" has since been determined to be a polyphyletic grouping based on molecular data. As a result, true ungulates have since been reclassified to the newer clade Euungulata in 2001 within the clade Laurasiatheria, while Paenungulata and Tubulidentata have been reclassified to the distant clade Afrotheria. Alternatively, some authors use the name Ungulata to designate the same clade as Euungulata.
Living ungulates are divided into two orders:
Odd-toed Perissodactyla including equines, rhinoceroses, and tapirs.
Even-toed Artiodactyla including cattle, antelope, pigs, giraffes, camels, sheep, deer, and hippopotamuses, among others.
Cetaceans such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises are also classified as artiodactyls, although they do not have hooves.
Most terrestrial ungulates use the hoofed tips of their toes to support their body weight while standing or moving. Two other orders of ungulates, Notoungulata and Litopterna, both native to South America, became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.
The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1231177. The Library of Congress control number is sh85139668. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ungulate” 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.