The inner ear morphology of the ‘condylarthran’ Hyopsodus lepidus.

We describe the bony labyrinth morphology of the Eocene ‘archaic ungulate’Hyopsoduslepidus(Bridgerian, North America) reconstructed from micro computed tomography scan data. Comparisons with the inner ear of the Eocene early diverging artiodactylDiacodexisand perissodactylXenicohippusallow refining the picture of the ancestral inner ear morphology of Euungulates. These taxa are very close morphologically and mostly differ by slight differences in their semicircular canal angulations and profile. They all present a secondary crus and a low position of the plane of the lateral semicircular canal relative to the posterior semicircular canal. These two characters, considered as ancestral features for Theria, might be symplesiomorphies of Euungulata as well.HyopsodusandXenicohippusshare characters also observed in other basal Equoidea, which would support the close relationship between these two taxa previously proposed in the literature. A functional study of the cochlea ofHyopsodus lepidusis also realised to discuss its putative ability of using terrestrial echolocation previously proposed in the literature. The morphology of the cochlea ofHyopsodus lepidusdoes not indicate a specialisation to sophisticated echolocation such as observed today in microchiropteran bats. However, its estimated audible range of frequencies (208 Hz to 76.8 KHz) would be compatible with terrestrial echolocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]