Page "Carnivora" Paragraph 17

The Miacidae are not a monophyletic group, but a paraphyletic array of stem taxa.

Today, Carnivora is restricted to the crown group, and Carnivora and miacoids are grouped in the clade Carnivoramorpha, and the miacoids are regarded as basal carnivoramorphs.

Based on dental features and braincase sizes, it is now known that Carnivora must have evolved from a form even more primitive than Creodonta, and thus these two orders may not even be sister groups.

The Carnivora, Creodonta, Pholidota, and a few other extinct orders are informally grouped together in the clade Ferae.

Older classification schemes divided the order into two suborders: Fissipedia ( which included the families of primarily land Carnivora ) and Pinnipedia ( which included the true seals, eared seals, and walrus ).

However, it is now recognized that the Fissipedia is a paraphyletic group and that the pinnipeds were not the sister group to the fissipeds but rather had arisen from among them.