Figure 1

Supertree of extant placentals (50% majority rule consensus of 17 most parsimonious trees – length = 8150.935), following application of the protocol of Bininda-Emonds et al. [32] to the complete set of references. Asterisks indicate which branches collapse in the strict consensus. Numbers above branches represent reduced qualitative support (rQS; [26,39]) values. The orders are indicated by brackets and the first three letters of their names following Table 1, with the additional fossil order Bibymalagasia indicated by BIB. Whippomorpha and the four superorders are also indicated.