Viverravidae
Viverravidae ("civet ancestors") is an extinct monophyletic family of mammals from extinct superfamily Viverravoidea within the clade Carnivoramorpha, that lived from the early Palaeocene to the late Eocene in North America, Europe and Asia. They were once thought to be earliest carnivorans and ancestral to extant carnivorans, but now are placed outside the order Carnivora based on cranial morphology as a relatives (a plesion-group) to extant carnivorans. General characteristics. Wang and Tedford propose that they arose in North America 66-60 million years ago, spread to Asia then later to Europe, and were the first carnivoramorphans and possessed  the first true pair of carnassial teeth. In viverravids, the skull is elongated and the number of molars is reduced to two (M1/m1 and M2/m2 are present and M3/m3 are absent). Classification and phylogeny. Classification. Taxonomy retrieved from the Paleobiology Database Phylogeny. The phylogenetic relationships of Viverravidae are shown in the following cladogram: