Palaeogale is an extinct genus of carnivorous mammal known from the Late Eocene, Oligocene, and Early Miocene of North America, Europe, and Eastern Asia. A small carnivore often associated with the mustelids, Palaeogale might have been similar to living genets, civets, and linsangs.
The ancestry of Palaeogale remains enigmatic. The genus appears in Europe 32 Ma, after the Grande Coupure, but 35-36 Ma-old (Chadronian NALMA) specimens from Pipestone Springs, Montana, are the oldest known.[2] Palaeogale survived until the late Early Miocene of Europe and the early Early Miocene of East Asia.[3]
Morlo & Nagel 2007 noted that the Palaeogale specimens found in Mongolia are the most plesiomorphic (p1 double-rooted, m2 relatively large, very small overall size) and that the genus probably originated there and migrated to Europe and North America.[3]
Palaeogale was the size of a small mustelid but had a hypercarnivorous dentition and its taxonomic position remains enigmatic. Its dental morphology includes both mustelid (reduced m2) and feliform (slit-like carnassial notch, loss of metaconid on m2, presence of parastyle on P4) features, and Palaeogale is typically placed in Carnivora incertae sedis.[4][5]
The body mass of Palaeogale sectoria, one of the smallest species, has been estimated to much less than a kilo based on teeth sizes. It was probably semifossorial.[6] P. sanguinarius is slightly larger than P. dorothiae and probably equivalent in age.[5]
When von Meyer 1846 named the genus Palaeogale and two species (P. pulchella and P. fecunda), he only gave a very vague description of these taxa. Gervais 1848 described a related species, Mustela minuta, which Schlosser 1888[7] thought identical and named Palaeogale minuta, a name that has remained accepted for the type species.[8]