Nandiniidae in the context of Superfamily (biology)

Reginald Innes Pocock, F.R.S. (4 March 1863 – 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist.

Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. He studied biology and geology at University College, Bristol, under Conwy Lloyd Morgan and William Johnson Sollas. In 1885, he became an assistant at the Natural History Museum, and worked in the section of entomology for a year. He was put in charge of the collections of Arachnida and Myriapoda. He was also given the task of arranging the British bird collections, in the course of which he developed a lasting interest in ornithology. The 200 papers he published in his 18 years at the museum soon brought him recognition as an authority on Arachnida and Myriapoda; he described between 300 and 400 species of millipedes alone, and also described the scorpion genus Brachistosternus. In 1929, he proposed the family Nandiniidae, with the genus Nandinia as its sole member. He argued that it differs from the Aeluroidea by the structure and shape of its ear canal and mastoid part of the temporal bone.

Aeluroidea, Ailuroidea, or Feloidea is the name of a taxon (infraorder or superfamily) comprising cat-like Carnivora. More specifically the taxon comprises:

• either cat-like Carnivora in the broader sense, i.e. it is synonymous with Feliformia (more specifically either Feliformia sensu stricto, i.e. crown Feliformia, or Feliformia sensu lato, i.e. Pan-Feliformia);
• or cat-like Carnivora in the narrower sense, i.e. it comprises only the family Felidae (recently also Prionodontidae) and its closest extinct relatives.

The Aeluroidea in the first, i.e. broader sense, has been sometimes called infraorder Aeluroida since 1982. The name Feloidea is sometimes used in a third sense—it designates the taxon corresponding to all Feliformia except the family Nandiniidae.