Pangolins: The Only Mammals on Earth Armoured in Keratin Scales
The pangolin (Manis and seven related genera), the only mammal whose entire body is sheathed in overlapping keratin plates, is native to the forests and savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. A nocturnal, almost entirely myrmecophagous animal with a tongue longer than its torso, the pangolin occupies a narrow ecological niche, regulating termite and ant colonies across two continents, while sustained trafficking pressure has made it the most seized wild mammal on record.
Lineage and Evolutionary Record
The pangolin belongs to the order Pholidota, a lineage with no close living relatives outside the carnivorans it split from roughly 60 million years ago 1. Comparative genomics has steadily sharpened that picture. A chromosome-level assembly of M. javanica now anchors the group's position on the mammalian tree 2, resolving a placement that morphology alone had left unsettled for most of the last century.
Pangolins are the sole surviving members of Pholidota, with fossil material from the Eocene of Europe suggesting their ancestors were already scaled and insectivorous long before the modern genera appeared in Africa and Asia. Eight extant species are recognised, split evenly between the two continents, and each has diverged in body size, scale count, and the degree to which it lives in trees rather than burrows.