Fig. 12. Character matrix of Daouitherium and other primitive lophodont proboscideans (see text: features 1–19) and most parsimonious cladogram resulting from parsimony analysis with Hennig86 program, with distribution of the derived features. Length = 56; CI = 85; RI = 82. This cladogram is unrooted. The significance of Daouitherium for the ancestral morphotype of proboscideans and the basal relationships of lophodont proboscidean taxa with respect to other proboscideans (e.g., Moeritherium, deinotheres) and tethytherians will be investigated separately with the study of the new material of Phosphatherium (work in preparation). Analysed features are additive and are weighted according to their relative importance (see matrix);howeverananalysisofthismatrixwithoutweightingthefeaturesdoes not change the resulting topology. Several reversions that are possible according to the algorithm have been discounted as being anatomically unlikely (features 1, 3, 4). Asterisk indicates convergent feature.