Paromomyidae are one of several families of plesiadapiforms that flourished during the Paleocene in North America soon after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Although they are often among the best-represented plesiadapiforms in mammalian faunas in both North America and Europe, the early history of paromomyids is poorly understood, and their fossil record at higher latitudes is comparatively depauperate. We report here on the discovery of two new species of paromomyids from Paleocene deposits in southwestern Alberta: Edworthia greggi new species is the second known species of the basal paromomyid Edworthia Fox, Scott, and Rankin, whereas Ignacius glenbowensis new species is among the most abundantly represented species of Ignacius Matthew and Granger. These new discoveries document for the first time parts of the upper dentition of Edworthia, and the new species of Ignacius represents the first new, pre-Clarkforkian species of the genus to be described in nearly one hundred years. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of nearly all known paromomyid taxa (including the new species described herein) recovered both species of Edworthia near the base of the paromomyid tree in a polytomy with Paromomys depressidens, and a paraphyletic Ignacius. The new paromomyids from Alberta not only increase the known taxonomic diversity of Edworthia and Ignacius, but also add significantly to knowledge of the dental anatomy of these poorly known genera, and further add to a uniquely Canadian complement of Paleocene plesiadapiforms.

The supplementary data includes the Character List, Character taxon matrix, and a figure showing the branch support from the Cladistic analysis.  As stated in the paper, these data were analyzed as follows: 

A parsimony analysis was conducted using PAUP 4.0*a165 (Swofford, 2002) using the following steps:

1) Set Ukhaatherium nessovi as the only outgroup (Data>Define Outgroup…),

2) set selected characters as ordered (Data>Set Character Types; turn the following characters into ordered: 1, 12, 18, 31, 67, 72, 73, 83, 86, 92, and 93),

3) accept ordered characters (click ‘Done’),

4) set the type of analysis (Analysis>Heuristic search),

5) set the maximum number of trees to be saved to 1000 (General > SetMaxTrees > 1000);

6) set the number of replicates (reps) at 1000 holding 1000 trees at each step),

7) run the analysis (click OK).

The supplementary data also includes individual measurements for specimens of Edworthia greggi n. sp. and Ignacius glenbowensis n. sp.

The files are submitted as .txt and .xlsx files.  The .txt files can be opened with any text editor.  The .xlsx file can be opened in Excel.