Carpolestidae

Historically, the almost twenty species included within the family were thought to have given rise to each other over time in a linear and straightforward manner. Still today it is widely assumed that Elphidotarsius from the mid to late Paleocene gave rise to Carpodaptes which lived in the late Paleocene and subsequently gave rise to Carpolestes from the early Eocene. As a result, they have been used as biostratigraphic indicators in a variety of paleontological digs. However, the phylogenetic picture has been complicated by the discovery in Asia of both ancestral and derived carpolestids in the same stratigraphic layer.