Palaeohistology and life history of the early Palaeocene taeniodont Conoryctes comma (Mammalia: Eutheria)

The life histories of Palaeocene mammals are poorly known, but may have been central to their success in diversifying across terrestrial ecosystems after the end-Cretaceous extinction. Among these mammalian groups, the eutherian Taeniodonta are particularly enigmatic, with few modern analogues and no living descendants, despite being one of the only lineages to apparently traverse the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary. Here we investigate the life history of an early Palaeocene taeniodont, Conoryctes comma, based on a multi-individual, multi-element sample. We produced palaeohistological thin sections of skeletal elements, including one tooth and 26 postcranial bones, to produce 36 slides. Nearly all elements sampled exhibit similar osteohistological architecture, with a small internal zone of compacted coarse cancellous bone surrounded by an internal cortex of periosteally-derived fibrolamellar bone of variable thickness, and an outer cortex of lamellar bone. The well-vascularized ..., Specimens:
We selected a range of postcranial skeletons of Conoryctes comma, all collected from the Nacimientio Formation in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico (Fig. 1). In this paper, we consider Conoryctes to likely be synonymous with, or very closely related to, another named taeniodont genus, Huerfanodon, following Kynigopoulou (2023). Both taxa overlap in time and are nearly identical in size, being distinguished only by relatively minor differences in premolar morphology (e.g., presence/absence of P4 protocone; presence/absence of p4 metaconid), which is highly variable even between members of the same species (Kynigopoulou, 2023). However, it is outside the scope of this study to formally synonymize these names, and this endeavour is in progress elsewhere. Where the postcranial material in our sample is associated with dental material (e.g., NMMNH P-48198), the teeth are referrable to Conoryctes comma (Kynigopoulou et al., 2024). Further, because duplicate postc..., # Data from: Palaeohistology and life history of the early Palaeocene taeniodont Conoryctes comma (Mammalia: Eutheria)

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.vhhmgqp6f](10.5061/dryad.vhhmgqp6f)

## Description of the data and file structure

These folders contain overview images of palaeohistological thin sections of Conoryctes comma from Funston et al. “Palaeohistology and life history of the early Palaeocene taeniodont Conoryctes comma (Mammalia: Eutheria)” in Journal of Anatomy.

Each folder pertains to a single specimen, and for some specimens, multiple elements were thin-sectioned. The file naming convention is as follows:

Specimen number/Element/Section number (if applicable)/Light type (PP = plain polarized, XP = cross-polarized, Lambda = cross-polarized with lambda filter)/Panorama.jpg

Some additional terms may be included in the file name.

Questions about the dataset can be addressed to the corresponding authors as outlined in the manuscript.,