Abstract
Interest in the phylogeny of Macroscelididae(sengis or elephant shrews) has been prompted by molecularstudies indicating thatElephantulus rozetiis best placed asthe sister group ofPetrodromus tetradactylus(this cladebeing in turn the sister taxon toMacroscelides proboscideus)than among other species of the genusElephantulus. Untilnow, no discrete morphological characters have been pro-posed to support the grouping ofE. rozeti,Petrodromus, andMacroscelidesinto this single so-called‘Panelephantulus’clade. Here, we employedμCT scanning in order to investi-gate the petrosal and bony labyrinth (bony capsule of theinner ear) morphology of most species of extantMacroscelididae. We performed a cladistic analysis on eartraits and found that despite some convergences (e.g.,concerning the bony arterial canals inMacroscelidesandRhynchocyon) the middle and inner ear morphology fur-nishes significant support for the‘Panelephantulus’clade.In our analysis, this clade is unambigously supported by thepresence of a fully ossified stapediofacial tube. Two addi-tional characters (the presence of a bony septum at the mouthof the fenestra cochleae dividing the D3 sinus into twodistinct cavities and the absence of an accessory lateralpneumatic fossa) could also support‘Panelephantulus.’These newly discovered morphological characters supportthe molecular phylogenies published and highlight the im-portance of coding hitherto difficult to sample morphologieswithin cladistic analyses using micro-CT techniques.Taxonomic implications are briefly discussed.