Ruminantia
Ruminantia is a taxon within the order Artiodactyla that includes many of the well-known large grazing or browsing mammals: among them cattle, goats, sheep, deer, and antelope. All members of the Ruminantia employ foregut fermentation and are ruminants: they digest food in two steps, chewing and swallowing in the normal way to begin with, and then regurgitating the semidigested cud to rechew it and thus extract the maximum possible food value.
Evolution
Ruminantiamorpha is a total clade of artiodactyls defined, according to Spaulding et al., as "Ruminantia plus all extinct taxa more closely related to extant members of Ruminantia than to any other living species." Spaulding grouped some genera of the family Anthracotheriidae within Ruminantiamorpha (but not in Ruminantia), but placed others within Ruminantiamorpha's sister clade, Cetancodontamorpha.
The Tragulidae are the basal family in Ruminantia.
The ancestral Ruminantia karyotype is 2n = 48 similar to that of cetartiodactyls.
- Suborder Suina: pigs and peccaries
- Suborder Tylopoda: camels and llamas
- Suborder Cetruminantia: ruminants, whales and hippos
- unranked Ruminantia
- Infraorder Tragulina (paraphyletic)
- Family †Prodremotheriidae
- Family †Hypertragulidae
- Family †Praetragulidae
- Family †Protoceratidae
- Family Tragulidae: chevrotains, 6 living species in 4 genera
- Family †Archaeomerycidae
- Family †Lophiomerycidae
- Infraorder Pecora
- Family Cervidae: deer and moose, 49 living species in 16 genera
- Family †Gelocidae
- Family †Palaeomerycidae
- Family †Hoplitomerycidae
- Family †Climacoceratidae
- Family Giraffidae: giraffe and okapi, 2 living species in 2 genera
- Family Antilocapridae: pronghorn, one living species in one genus
- Family †Leptomerycidae
- Family Moschidae: musk deer, 4 living species in one genus
- Family Bovidae: cattle, goats, sheep, and antelope, 135 living species in 48 genera
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