Despite nearly half of the Carnivora being zoonotic hosts, and their ubiquity across all major biomes globally, there remain surprising gaps in basic biological ecological knowledge this group that preclude deeper assessments diversity risk.Functional traits related to dietary suggest hosts reflect an omnivorous life history strategy with potentially profound implications for infection toleranc...

Abstract Santiago Roth (1850–1924) was a naturalist that collected and sold fossils from the Pampean region (Argentina) in Europe. Much of specimens by are hosted at Paläontologisches Institut und Museum, Universität Zürich Muséun D’Histoire Naturelle Geneva Switzerland, but were never studied. In this article, we review order Carnivora under taxonomical temporal approach. We confirm presence 1...

We describe new carnivoran fossils from Kalodirr and Moruorot, two late Early Miocene sites in the Lothidok Formation of West Turkana, Kenya. The fossils include a new species of viverrid, Kichechia savagei sp. nov., a new genus and species of felid, Katifelis nightingalei gen. et sp. nov., and an unidentified musteloid. We also report new records of the amphicyonid Cynelos macrodon. These new ...

Syncytins are envelope protein genes of retroviral origin that have been captured for a function in placentation. Two such genes have already been identified in simians, two distinct, unrelated genes have been identified in Muridae, and a fifth gene has been identified in the rabbit. Here, we searched for similar genes in the Laurasiatheria clade, which diverged from Euarchontoglires--primates,...

The circular, double-stranded 8-kb DNA genome of papillomaviruses (PVes) consists mainly of 4 large genes, E1, E2, L2, and L1. Approximately 150 papillomavirus genomes have been sequenced to date. We analyzed a representative sample of 53 PVes genomes using maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, maximum parsimony, and distance-based methods both on nucleotide (nt) and on amino acid (aa) alignm...